How to Trim Your Beard in Easy Steps So it looks Professional

This beard sure has got a little bit out of hand. My name is Michael Holm. I'm a professional barber and I'm going to show you exactly how I would trim this into a neat shape that looks professional and is easy to do for you at home. And although I'm a professional barber and I have all the tools, I've gone on Amazon and I bought myself... That's the box open. Will, can you believe it? That's world-class unboxing right there. Absolute cinema. I've gone on Amazon and I bought myself a MANSCAPED beard trimmer because I'm guessing that you're using something similar, so I'm going to make this tutorial for you. Step one, bare blade. I'm going to put the guard thingy on it. Now, this is just one guard for the whole thing and I'm going to set it to six, which I think is six millimetres on this. So let's go to six. I'm all the way to six on here. It's just like a dial that you turn, okay? So the first stage here is to look at this area here. Now, I want to bring that down to six millimetres. If I was using a clipper, that would be a number two, okay? Number two or six millimetres. Now, my beard trimmer says six and six is a good length, so let's go with that, okay? Right along here, I'm just going to work my way up. Next step is I'm going to make sure that my beard's brushed right down on this side, okay? Bring it down, down the face, okay? And then I'm going to go sideways across here, this way. The reason for that is because I don't want the hair to stand completely up. I don't want to go against the grain with this. I want this to go sideways, like across the hair. And because the hair is not standing up completely, it's not going to cut it exactly to six mil. So what it's going to do is it's going to cut it a little bit longer because the hair is basically getting pushed over before it's getting cut. It's not standing on end by going against the grain. So let's do that. So I just went to about this point here. I don't want to go any lower than that, okay? I've got the jaw here, jaw here, and keep this on the chin because what we're going to do now is go with the grain, go down the hair. Now the hair's lying flat, so imagine it's all kind of like stacked up on top of itself. And what we're going to do is skim the top of the stack off. That's the best way I could describe it. Rather than standing the stack up like straw and trimming it, we'll lie it flat and just skim the top off. Now the idea is what we want to do is retain the shape of the jaw because I'm going to square this off at the bottom. So I'm going to go down, not follow around my chin like that. I'm just going to go down, straight down in a line and off the chin. So straight down, not going around under the chin, okay? Okay, so I'll quickly repeat the other side. Now remember the steps, steps were up first and then sideways and now down. Okay, now I'm going to get rid of this, okay? So the next step is now going to be forming the jawline. Now if you don't have a jawline, you can create one with your beard. It's up to you where you want that jawline to be. You can bring it up, you can have it quite low, you can have it quite wide, quite square. The great thing is if you can grow a beard, you can really create any shape you want. That's what we do with hair on the head and you can do the same with the beard, create different facial shapes. So for me, I now want to bring this height up. It's too long now and I want to bring it up and make it a little bit squarer underneath. So a good way to do this is to anchor your forearms on your chest and then you've got stability, okay? You don't want your hand waving around when you're cutting freehand and what you're going to do is aim to get right into the bottom where the neck and the chin meet, just under here. Use that two-hand method that I showed you. Because I'm demonstrating, I've got one hand on the mirror and one hand on the clipper, but I'm quite steady with a set of clippers. So I'm not boasting, but I have been doing it for a long time. So let's do it. So it's getting very square, but look, super long just on these areas here. We'll deal with that and here, okay? We're going to have to freehand shape that a little bit. What I want is basically this squareness here right now underneath the chin, just here. Okay, so now I'm just going to get rid of all this. I'm finding it a little bit difficult with the hand mirror, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to move over to my main mirror here and I'll put the camera in front so you can see what I'm doing. I've got these corners now around here because we did the six mil around this area, the upwards, sideways and downwards, and I've been left with this corner, which I kind of want a corner, but I need to freehand shape it and this is where you need to be very careful, okay? So I'm going to hold the trimmer in two hands, okay? Two hands for stability. Switch it on and then I'm going to freehand just shape this like I'm shaping a hedge. It's like you would shape a hedge in your garden, okay? So you can see I didn't like chomp in. I didn't cut right in. I just glided along the surface of the bush, okay? This is the hedge trimmer, right? So as if you're just gliding along the edge of the hedge trimmer. Don't push in with it into the skin, okay? You're freehanding it. Keep it gliding across, just skimming the surface of the hair off into the shape that you want. So I'm trying to create more of a jaw shape now with the trimmer, okay? Beard trimmers tend to have a slightly wider tooth because the beard hair is quite coarse and this one's picking up fine, but it's not causing any irritation on the neck. If you're using a big hair clipper, you know, something that's for the head, then you might find that in this area, if you run that along the neck, it's giving you a lot of irritation. So you're much better with a trimmer, okay? Now maybe you have like a trimmer set that's a hair clipper and a trimmer or a beard trimmer, but I would definitely get a trimmer rather than a clipper for this area here. So just freehanding again. Can I grab a brush and just brush it all up a bit? And it's kind of like a little bit straggly, so what I'm going to do is freehand across the front of it too. So important here, we're not like digging in. Don't chomp in with the trimmer, okay? Just skim the surface if you want, you know? You'll notice that I use two hands. Remember, you need stability. The one hand can be a bit wobbly, that's why I find it a little bit hard. When I was using the hand mirror, I like how they called it a hedge trimmer, and those words are very important for you if you're trimming your own beard, because that's what you're doing. This is exactly what I'm doing. I'm shaping the hedge, okay? You create any shape you want. So whilst I had this quite square, now I'm just softening the edge a little bit, trying to get it balanced up. Right, still a lot of cleaning up to do, but the moustache, here's a trick for you, okay? You comb down until the teeth, the points of the comb, meet the top of the lip, okay? There, you see that? So I've got the teeth right on the lip, and then what I can do is I can trim away everything that's beneath the teeth of the comb, okay? I'm happy there. Over to the side, and then I'm going to draw around that shape with the trimmer. Now, why did I do that? I did that because I don't want to go higher than the lip, like a little centimetre higher than the lip. You have two different skin colours, the colour of the lip and the colour of the skin underneath. And I find if you go higher than the lip, that it looks really, it doesn't fit at all. It just doesn't work. Now, for some people, it may work. They have like this pencil moustache. For me, definitely doesn't work. So I'm very careful to make sure that the moustache is bang on the lip. Now, my moustache is getting quite thick, right? Quite dense. And I also want to take some density out of the moustache. Hair in my mouth. So let me grab my guard again. I'll show you. We're not going up against it. I'll show you. So I'll put the guard on. Okay, it's on. And I'm going to wind it back to, I'm going to look for 1.5 millimetres. There's 1.5 on the dial. And then I'm going to comb down the moustache with this. Okay, I missed the thick moustache. I really miss. Actually, I didn't realise how thick it was, but it was adding quite a bit of darkness to the top lip. So this is what I normally take it down to, like 1.5. But I missed it. I think I preferred it when it was thicker. Okay, but I'm still happy with it. I mean, it's still, it's just, I think I would have maybe, maybe go with a two actually. Maybe go with a two millimetre rather than the one and a half millimetre. But that's fine just now. Right, now I need to refine this a little bit. So I'm going to get my brush and just brush all the debris. Get it brushed down. This is a natural boar bristle brush. Really good for your beard. And I'll also leave a link for where you can find a natural boar bristle brush. It's good for exfoliating the beard. Feels good. I mean, I could be here brushing my hair, brushing my beard all day, but you don't want to watch that. So let's get on with this. Underneath, you saw where I picked my line. So I'm just going to go with foil shaver. I prefer to foil shave this area rather than use a razor because this area of your neck is a little bit more sensitive than the skin on your face. So what I'll do, what I'll do is get, I've got this little like barber boss pocket foil shaver. It's a little thing. And like ideal for traveling with the same as the manscaped. It's just like, I like little tools I can take with me when I'm on the move. So this, this is super. So I don't know about you, but I like to leave this area here natural, right? I like to leave it looking a bit rough. So this is all clean and kind of pristine. And this is a little bit rougher. However, for this video, I'm going to make this a little bit neater here just for you. So what's a good guide for like lining up this area? I would say, look for just where the density begins, okay? That's the line for you. So whatever density of beard hair you have, aim for where you think a solid line could be formed. So I'm just going to take around about this here. I've got it quite high up my face, but whatever it comes, if you have density here, just take away the soft hair and keep the density, okay? For me, it's here. Even if it's just a chin strap, just keep, your line is where the density is, okay? So look at yourself square on, you know, you can draw a line through your face with your fingers like that. And then you know, okay, that's a point. You can match up on the other side too, okay? Right. Now, now the razor step, in my opinion, is optional. Don't use a shavette if you don't feel comfortable using it, okay? You can easily use a safety razor or you can use the foil shaver again. I like to use the shavette because I can see where I'm going. It can, I can go right up to the line with the edge of the blade and I'd maybe use something like a clear gel, okay? So that you can see through it rather than a foam. So I have a tiny little dot of clear gel and I'm just going to put that on there. Not even all of that dot, just a tiny little amount. I'll save a little bit for the other side. A little bit on this side as well. Just a tiny amount, just so that the razor glides and you're not like dragging it across your skin, scraping, leaving yourself red faced, okay? You need to care for the skin. So what I do is raise it at a 30 degree angle, okay? Stretch your skin. I want to keep that line really high. And the same on the other side. So I could have done that with the foil shaver and just brushed up and taken those little hairs away, but I just wanted the accuracy of the razor. As I say, I'm probably going to let that go rough anyway, let it grow out a little bit. But the tools I used, manscaped hedge trimmer, good job. Probably give that about an 8 out of 10 as a tool because I found that this little guard got a little bit congested, but no big deal to just take it off and give it a clear out. And I do have very dense facial hair, so I mean, not that it caused a problem, it's still cut fine. I just, it's just, I think because of the way the guard is, the hair doesn't fall out of it really easily, but no big deal with the congestion. Just clear it out. Foil shaver. I think those are your two things you need. Foil shaver, the, you know, a beard trimmer of sorts and a foil shaver. Get yourself one of these if you have a beard. Get yourself a boar bristle brush. Obviously I've put subscribe on the back of that because I'm trying to get people like you to subscribe. So make sure you subscribe. And I'm going to be telling you soon a little bit about the hair transplant that I had, which is starting to come in now. I'm getting a little bit of a shadow in the sparse areas. So there's a video coming up in about three months time on that and keep a comb handy as well. Hope you enjoyed the video. I'll see you again in the next one.