Robert B. Brown
Light Stubble is a style of facial hair that can be a stepping stone to a full beard or it can be a chosen style. For the sake of the advice, let’s assume that you would like to incorporate Light Stubble as your current look. Perfect. Now, there are two distinct subcategories of light stubble. The first involves letting the hair go and embracing the whole hobo-chic kind of look. The second requires grooming the edges and the neck area, maintaining a specific length, and using some products to embrace a more stylish look. The hobo chic look is lazy and out of style, so let’s work together to take a face full of stubble and turn it into a handsome and rugged look.
Is This Look for Me?
In general, the light stubble look works for most men and it easy to maintain. Face size doesn’t seem to matter, but thickness and density of your facial hair does. If your facial hair is not thick enough, you need to consider other options. Perhaps one section of your facial hair is thick, and you can embrace that spot as your facial hair look instead of the whole beard area. Sometimes you just gotta suck it up and stay clean shaven.
Necessary Tools
To maintain the neat edges and maintain a specific length for the rest of the stubble, you will need to get a good quality beard trimmer. I recently picked up the Suprent Beard Trimmer Kit and I love it! First, it is waterproof, so if I am in a rush, I can use it while showering. It also comes with some helpful attachments such as the ear and nose hair trimmer. Since we are putting in time to make sure our stubble looks good, we don’t want our nose and ears have hairs sticking out. They are going to be extra noticeable and look gross.
How Long Does It Take To Grow a Light Stubble
You are going to want to just pick a length and keep buzzing your stubble till all hairs are that length, but I have a better technique for growing it out. Start with a bit longer stubble and work backward. This is a better method for figuring out what length works best for you. Since everyone is different, it is difficult to estimate how long it should take to get to a proper length, but it could be anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks depending on the person.
How To Grow a Light Stubble – The Technique
Set the guard on your beard trimmer to a longer length than needed and trim all hairs. Using small increments, work backward until you get to the length that is just right. If it is too long, it can look like you are in the middle of growing a beard, but if it is too short it can look like you just forgot to shave.
Now that the length is where you want it to be, we need to weed whack the edges. The cheekbone will definitely have some stray hairs, so be sure to buzz them. As far as the edge of the beard area goes, it doesn’t have to be a sharp line, but you should do your best to make it a neat edge. Keep it parallel to your jawline if more intensive grooming is needed.
Avoid These Mistakes
The biggest mistake men make when grooming the neck area is to make it a very sharp line and to bring it up too high. If the area is groomed properly, it can make you look thinner and give you more of a distinguished jaw line. If not, it can have the adverse effect of making you look heavier than you are.
There are two neck methods of varying difficulty. If you are not comfortable grooming and buzzing, Work on creating a soft line directly below the jaw line. By keeping it a bit lower, it blends more smoothly into the jaw. Buzz or shave all hair below.
For an advanced groomer, an even smoother look can be achieved by tapering the beard hair and avoiding a line. The hairs starting at the jawline and moving down towards the Adam’s apple should get progressively shorter until the area below the Adam’s apple is completely shaven. A beard trimmer with a guard that slides easily from one length to another is a huge help.
Upkeep
This look is very easy to maintain and does not require much upkeep. Every 1 – 2 days you will want to repeat the steps we followed above. Start by buzzing the entire stubble are with your beard trimmer set to your chosen length. Trim any stray cheek hairs and then clean up the neck. With practice, it will get down to 30 seconds to 1 minute routine.
Soften It Up
When growing out your facial hair, it can get itchy. Beard oil helps prevent it by moisturizing your face and conditioning the hairs. I know what you’re saying “I’m a man, I don’t need to rub oil on my face because it itches.” Fine, fine. However, take into consideration your poor girlfriend or wife. A stubble that is not moisturized can feel like sandpaper. Nobody wants to kiss sandpaper.
Beardbrand makes a fantastic line of beard oils with a variety of amazing scents. I skip the cologne and put this on instead since it actually helps my face look and feels great while smelling awesome.
