Beard Styles
Beard styles, matched to your face.
Every beard guide is a list of twenty-five styles and a photo grid. You already know the two things that decide it — the shape of your face, and how much hair is on it right now. Answer those and the choice narrows to about one.
Three questions. One straight answer.
A beard is a frame. Frames change proportions.
There is no such thing as a beard that suits everyone, and the styles that get called "most attractive" are just the ones that happen to balance the most common face shapes. The whole trick is proportion. Length at the chin makes a face look longer. Volume on the cheeks makes it look wider. Everything below is an application of those two sentences.
The cheek line is where the beard stops on your face — roughly a line from the corner of the moustache to the bottom of the sideburn. The neckline sits about two fingers above the Adam's apple, curving up to behind the ear, and it is the single thing that separates a kept beard from a neglected one. The chin is where you leave or remove length to change how long your face reads. Get those three right and the style name barely matters.
Stubble is three to five days. A short beard is two to six weeks. Medium is two to six months. A properly long beard is a year, and it does not look good at month four on the way there — that's the stage most people quit. Whatever you pick, give it four weeks before you judge it and eight before you decide it doesn't suit you. Beards fill in unevenly and the thin bit at week three is usually not permanent.
Your hair grows the way it grows. If the cheeks come in thin, no oil, supplement or style changes that — but a style chosen around your actual growth pattern looks deliberate, and one chosen against it looks like an accident. Every recommendation on this page is built on working with what's there.
Short beard styles.
The most-worn category in Australia by a distance, and the easiest to get right at home. Everything here works with a trimmer and ten minutes a week.
Heavy stubble
Three to five days of growth, then held at 3mm with a trimmer guard. Defined cheek line, defined neckline, everything else even. Suits nearly every face shape, needs about two minutes every second day, and is the only "style" that looks better slightly untidy.
Short boxed beard
Squared off at the jaw with tight cheeks and clean, deliberate edges. Longer on the chin than the sides — usually a 4 guard on the chin, 3 on the jaw, 2 up the cheeks. The one to ask for if you want your jaw to read stronger.
Short rounded beard
The same length as the boxed beard with the corners softened instead of squared. Follows the natural curve of the jaw. This is the fix for a face that's already very angular — a boxed beard on a square jaw reads blocky.
Corporate beard
Short, dense, uniform, hard edges, nothing above the cheekbone and nothing below the neckline. The professional short beard style — it reads as deliberate rather than as facial hair, which is the whole point in a conservative office. Needs trimming weekly, without fail.
Circle beard and goatee
A goatee is chin only. A circle beard joins the moustache to the chin in a ring. Both keep all the weight at the centre of the face, which is why they work so well on a wide or round face and on anyone whose cheeks don't fill in. Requires a clean shave around it — this is a razor style, not a trimmer style.
Van Dyke
A disconnected moustache and chin patch — the goatee's sharper relative. Deliberately theatrical, and one of the few styles that flatters a narrow chin because it adds definition without adding width.
Beardstache
A full, heavy moustache over stubble everywhere else. It draws the eye up and across, which balances a long face and a heavy jaw, and it is the most forgiving style there is for patchy cheeks — the cheeks aren't part of it.
Medium and long beard styles.
Past about 2cm a beard stops being a trim and starts being a shape. This is also the point where it needs conditioning to behave — coarse hair with no oil in it goes wiry and sits in whatever direction it dried.
Full beard, medium
Two to six months of growth, kept even, edges maintained, no dramatic shaping. The default and, for an oval face, the correct answer. Everything else in this section is a full beard with the weight moved somewhere on purpose.
Ducktail
Tapered at the sides and left long at the chin so it comes to a soft point. The single best style for a round face — all the visual weight ends up below the jaw, which lengthens everything above it. Needs balm and a comb to hold the shape.
Hollywoodian
A full beard with the sideburns disconnected and the cheek line dropped low. Pulls the eye to the jaw and chin and takes width out of the upper face. Good on a long face because it adds mass at the sides without pointing anything downward.
Garibaldi
Wide, full and rounded at the bottom rather than pointed, usually about 10–20cm. The right long beard for a square or angular face — the round base softens a hard jaw instead of doubling down on it.
Full long beard
A year or more, trimmed only to keep the neckline and the ends tidy. The honest version: it takes twelve months, it looks unresolved for about four of them, and it needs oil daily or it will look dry and feel worse. Worth it if you want it.
Verdi
A rounded beard of 8–10cm paired with a styled, separate moustache. Four to eight months of growth and the most maintenance of anything on this page, because the moustache has to be trained separately. If you want a big beard that still looks groomed rather than wild, this is it.
Faded beard styles.
A beard fade is a gradient instead of a hard line where the beard meets the sideburns and the cheek. Nothing is shorter or longer overall — the length just steps down as it travels up, so there is no visible edge. It is the difference between a beard that stops and a beard that finishes.
Two places. The sideburn fade blends the beard up into the hair so the two don't meet at a step — this is the one that makes a beard look barber-cut. The cheek fade shortens the length as it rises toward the cheekbone, so the top edge of the beard dissolves rather than ends. Most good fades do both.
Guard lengths stepped down in sequence — for example a 4 through the body of the beard, a 3 at the jaw, a 2 up the cheek, a 1 at the temple — then the joins blurred with the trimmer held at an angle and moved in short arcs. The skill is entirely in the blending, not the guards.
Have a barber cut the fade the first time, then maintain it yourself. Fading your own beard means working blind on the side of your head with your arm at an awkward angle, and the mistake — a visible step — takes two weeks to grow out. A faded beard works with any length from heavy stubble upward and suits every face shape, because a fade removes width at the top rather than adding it anywhere.
Beard styles by face shape.
If you'd rather read it than click through the picker. The logic underneath every row is the same: add length where you want the face to look longer, take width off where you don't.
| Face shape | Go for | Avoid | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round | Ducktail, short boxed beard, goatee or circle beard | Full cheeks, mutton chops, anything round at the bottom | Length at the chin and tight sides lengthen a face that's as wide as it is long. |
| Square | Heavy stubble, short rounded beard, Garibaldi | Hard squared edges, very long pointed beards | The jaw is already strong. Soften the corners instead of drawing them. |
| Oval | Almost anything — full beard, boxed, stubble, fade | Extremes at either end | Already balanced, so the beard is a free choice. Pick on maintenance, not shape. |
| Long / rectangular | Beardstache, Hollywoodian, fuller cheeks kept short at the chin | Ducktail, goatee, anything long and pointed | Width at the sides shortens the face. Chin length makes it longer, which is the wrong direction. |
| Heart / diamond | Full beard weighted at the jaw, circle beard, Van Dyke | Volume high on the cheeks, thin pointed chin styles | The forehead or cheekbones are the widest part, so mass belongs at the bottom. |
| Triangular | Short boxed beard, goatee, Van Dyke | Anything that adds width at the jaw | The jaw is already the widest point — keep the sides tight and build the top. |
Patchy, bald and grey.
Work with the density you've got instead of waiting for the gaps to fill. Anything centred on the chin and moustache — goatee, circle beard, Van Dyke, beardstache — ignores the cheeks entirely, and those are where patchiness almost always shows. If you want a full beard anyway, keep it short and even: at 3–5mm the eye reads texture rather than gaps, whereas at 20mm every thin patch is a hole. Give any new growth eight weeks before you decide, and comb the hair across a thin area rather than down.
With a shaved or bald head the beard is the entire silhouette, so go one length longer than you think. A short beard on a bald head can read as unfinished; a medium full beard with a defined jaw gives the head a base and looks intentional. Keep a hard, high cheek line — the contrast between clean skin and dense beard is the whole effect — and keep the neckline tight, because there's no hair up top to balance a soft one. The ducktail and the full medium beard both work here.
Grey hair is coarser and reflects more light, so a grey beard reads thinner than a dark one at the same length. Leave it slightly longer than you would have when it was dark — around 10–15mm rather than 5 — and keep the edges sharp, because a crisp cheek line is what makes grey look deliberate instead of neglected. Grey also goes dry faster, so it needs oil more than a dark beard does, not less. A short boxed beard or a corporate beard in salt-and-pepper is about as good as facial hair gets.
A style is a shape. Keeping it is a routine.
Whatever you land on, the maintenance is roughly the same four things, and it takes about a minute a day.
Wash it properly
Shampoo is built to strip oil. A beard wash block cleans without taking out what the hair needs, two or three times a week rather than daily.
Oil it daily
The one that matters. Beard hair is coarser than head hair and the skin underneath can't keep up, which is what causes the itch that makes most people shave it off in week two. Sweet almond, macadamia and apricot kernel, blended fresh to order in Moss Vale.
Balm it once it has opinions
Oil conditions, balm styles. Past about 2cm you need something to hold a shape — beeswax and shea for control, macadamia and sweet almond underneath. No crunch, no flaking.
Comb it, don't brush it in
Dense hardwood, fine and wide teeth, with a case. Wood doesn't build static the way plastic does, so it distributes oil evenly instead of dragging it back out.
Fair questions.
Which type of beard looks most attractive?
Short, well-kept stubble and a short boxed beard win most surveys, but that's mostly because they suit the widest range of faces and take the least maintenance to keep looking deliberate. The more useful answer: the most attractive beard is the one that balances your proportions and gets trimmed. A neglected full beard beats nothing in exactly no circumstances.
What are the most common beard styles?
In rough order of how often we see them: heavy stubble, short boxed beard, short rounded beard, corporate beard, circle beard, goatee, beardstache, faded beard, full medium beard, ducktail, Hollywoodian, Garibaldi, Van Dyke and the full long beard. Everything else is a variation on one of those with the weight moved somewhere.
What is the best short beard style?
The short boxed beard, for most people. It's about 5–15mm, holds a defined edge, makes the jaw read stronger, and takes ten minutes a week with a trimmer. If your face is already angular, take the same length and round the corners instead of squaring them.
What beard style suits a round face?
Anything that puts length at the chin and keeps the sides tight — a ducktail if you have the length, a short boxed beard if you don't, a goatee or circle beard if the cheeks are thin. Avoid full round cheeks and anything that finishes in a curve, because both make a round face read rounder.
What is the best fade beard style?
A sideburn fade blended into a short boxed beard is the most versatile — it suits every face shape and every hair length. Get the first fade cut by a barber and maintain it yourself afterwards. Fading your own beard blind, on the side of your head, is how you end up with a visible step that takes a fortnight to grow out.
What is the 3 month beard rule?
The idea that you shouldn't judge or properly shape a beard until it has had about three months to grow, because beards fill in unevenly and a patch that looks permanent at week three often isn't. It's sound advice with one caveat — keep the neckline tidy the whole time. "Don't judge it" doesn't mean "don't maintain it".
What is the best looking beard for older men?
A short boxed or corporate beard, kept slightly longer than you would have worn it younger — around 10–15mm. Grey hair is coarser and catches more light, so it reads thinner at short lengths, and the extra few millimetres give it density back. Keep the edges crisp. A sharp cheek line is what separates a deliberate grey beard from a neglected one.
What beard style works with a bald head?
A medium full beard or a ducktail, with a hard high cheek line. On a shaved head the beard is the whole silhouette, so it needs enough mass to give the head a base — short beards can read as unfinished. Keep the neckline tight, since there's no hair on top to balance a soft one.
Do I need beard oil for a goatee or stubble?
Yes, and arguably more than for a full beard. Both leave a lot of exposed skin around them, and it's the skin that itches and flakes, not the hair. A few drops worked in from the skin outward is enough — the whole thing takes about thirty seconds a day.
Are beards out of style?
No. What's changed is that the enormous untrimmed beard of the mid-2010s has given way to shorter, sharper, more maintained shapes — stubble, short boxed beards, faded edges. The beard didn't go anywhere; the grooming standard went up.
More on beards.
All beard care
Oil, balm, wash blocks, wooden combs and kits — made by hand in Moss Vale.
Browse the range → GuideBeard oil vs beard balm
Which one you actually need, and when it's worth running both.
Read the guide → GuideThe beard maintenance routine
Washing, oiling, combing and trimming, in the order that works.
Read the guide →