How To Use A Beard Straightener

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Recently, the beard straightening brush has become a huge "it" product among the community. You may be wondering how to best use a brush like this for your beard.

Of course, every beard is different and you'll need to experiment to know what works best for you. However, below is the best guidance on using a heated beard comb, like ours for your beard.

Rule 1. Use Your Beard Straightening Brush on a Clean Beard

Before you use your beard straightening brush, it's important to clean your beard. Otherwise, food particles, dirt, and excess oils will bake into your beard follicles.

For a smooth glide through your beard without any hiccups, make sure the beard hair is clean.

Below we'll talk about the about best practices for cleaning your beard before using your beard straightener.

Beard Cleaning Best Practices

Use a Beard Soap Instead of a Standard Bar

Today, you may use a standard bar of soap or body wash on your face. Many of them are designed with moisturizers that work well with facial skin.

However, these types of soaps are generally best for clean-shaven men or those with stubble.

Although these soaps have cleansers that are very good at stripping away dirt and oil from the surface of your skin, they can be harsh on the beard.

For any sizable beard (2″+) that will be straightened, standard soap can dry out your beard. Why? They strip the beard of its natural oils, leaving it brittle.

Largely absent of any sort of harsh chemicals, beard soaps will gently wash your face . Plus, it complements the natural oils (i.e. sebum oil) found on the surface of your skin.

It is important to note that a large part of a healthy beard is healthy facial skin. An exfoliate, such as walnut shell in our Orange Walnut Beard Soap, clears away oil buildup, dead skin, and dirt. In turn, this increases blood circulation.

Alternatively, Dr. Squatch beard soap has become quite popular.

Beard soaps such as ours generally contain moisturizing properties as well. Ours contains Shea butter for this purpose.

It is incredibly important to maintain the moisture levels within your beard prior to straightening.

Alternative: Use a Beard Oil to Moisturize

Using a high-heat beard straightener on an already dry beard is not a great idea. However if you continue to use a standard bar of soap, consider combing a beard oil through your beard before you straighten it.

Beard oils will help moisturize, condition, and soften the facial hair. As a result, your beard will be well primed for straightening.

However, using a beard oil before a heated beard straightener can lead to build up on the brush. Learn about how to remove oil buildup from your beard straightening brush in our article here.

Once you have used a beard soap and rinsed off, it is important to know how you dry your beard.

Rule 2: Pat Dry Your Beard Prior to Straightening

Before using a heated beard comb, best practice is to shower or wash your face with a beard sop as noted above. Once you hop out of the shower, make sure your beard is properly dried!

Avoid rubbing the towel across your face! Instead, you want to make sure that you pat dry your beard.

Rubbing it vigorously tangles up the hair strands, especially if you have a longer beard. Plus, it can cause frizz and lead the beard strands to repel one another. In fact, this is a major reason why 'ionic' generators exist in beard straighteners today. Drying your beard in this way will strip it of negative ions. Ionic generators will replenish negative ions, bringing a balance back to the facial hair and reducing frizz.

Over time, over-rubbing your beard can break and pull beard hair, leading to general volume loss. In severe cases, you may also end up with patches on your face.

Ultimately, a clean, well nourished, properly dried beard is essential before you can safely and effectively straighten your beard.

Once the beard is patted dry, you can choose to use your straightener at this point, or apply beard oil.

Next, we'll get into the tips for straightening your beard.

Rule 3: Follow These Best Practices for Straightening

Consider Using an Argan Oil Based Heat Shield Spray

With the potential for high heat to damage beard hair, you want to keep it protected. Beard oils with an argan oil base, or argan oil heat shield sprays, can be used for this.

Prior to straightening, use this product to make sure that your beard does not get fried!

Start at a Low Temperature Setting

When using a straightener, especially for the first time, it's a good idea to start with a low temperature setting. This way, if the high heat is not jiving with your beard, you won't go too hot too fast.

Once you have an idea of how the tool works with your beard, you can experiment with higher temperatures and see which setting is best for you.

With 12 temperature settings on our heated beard comb, we are sure you can find one that suits your beard type and style.

Brush all the Way Through Your Beard

A beard brush is not a straightening iron! Do not hold the beard straightening brush on a single location in your beard for more than a couple seconds.

Keeping the heated portion in contact with your hair for extended periods of time is an easy way to burn your hair.

Instead, spend a short amount of time in each location.

Then, come back to prior sections after you've done the rest if you still need to straighten them more.

This prevents your hair from weakening, which can happen even if you aren't using the straightener at its highest possible temperature.

Brush Steadily

When moving the straightener through your beard, go in smooth, steady motions. Take the brush and move from top to bottom in clean strokes. Return to each section repeatedly until your beard is of the desired straightness.

Unplug Your Heated Beard Straightening Brush When Finished

Although our beard brush has a built in 30 minute self- shutoff feature, whenever you're not using the beard straightener be sure to unplug it.

Auto shut off functions help you if you ever forget, but you should not rely on it. Don't worry about it taking too long to heat back up once you unplug it; our beard straightener will take about a minute to go from totally cold to 450F.

So, there's no excuse to leave it plugged in, even if you have to step away for a few minutes. Safety first!

Grooming Your Beard After Using Your Beard Straightener

Ok, you cleaned and dried my beard and used your new beard straightening brush – are you done? That depends!

Straightening your beard for a special occasion? Leave it as and skip on any conditioning product (i.e. oil or balm) for the day.

However, if you are going to straighten your beard on a regular basis, we want to emphasize the importance of moisturizing and conditioning your beard and skin.

Repeated straightening can be tough on hair follicles, and therefore an application of beard balm should be considered.

Our beard balm contains all the great ingredients that beard oils have (i.e. carrier + essential oils) in addition to beeswax.

Beeswax in a beard balm gives a very light to medium hold, and therefore should help to keep your beard looking straight long after you have used your straightener.

When using balm, be gentle with the application, starting from the base of the follicle and making your way to the ends.

Be sure to only apply beard balm after using the Beard Straightener, not before. Using prior may yield unintended consequences.

Happy Grooming!

Finally, remember that beard straighteners are a great tool for men of all walks of life and all styles, but they are not magic wands.

Have a full beard grooming regimen in place to keep your beard healthy and looking at its best. As noted, we recommend only using your brush on a clean, well-nourished beard. Use our Beard Grooming Kit with Natural Beard Soap, Oil, and Balm, as well as 100% Boars Hair Brush and double sided wood comb for proper grooming.

If you follow the steps provided you will have a more straight and well-kept beard than you ever did before!