For men, one of the most irritating parts of the body to deal with is the beard. They might look cool and we might feel like they make us look more complete, but they are hard to get looking right. In fact, if you let your beard go without taming for long enough, you’ll end up looking far less dapper than you think you do. A wild beard is often a look that only very few styles of men can get away with. When you want to look flash, you’ll need to spend some cash on beard tapering equipment. 

How, though, can you taper a beard? What’s the ideal way to do it?

Just about every guy who has tried to go steady and taper a beard will have made a mistake. It usually means having to take your full beard off as you leave a big gouge in your beard which is impossible to disguise. If you would like to avoid such irritation, read on. We’ve got some simple steps that should help you to keep your beard looking as good as it should, free from mistakes and uneven tapering.

Get your foundation in order

Before you do anything, make sure that you take the time to trim and prepare your beard. You can’t get a good taper to your beard if it’s all uneven lengths, shapes, and styles. Get rid of the parts of your beard that are inconsistent with the rest. Find a genuine level of thickness that can work for the whole of your beard.

Start off with the beard and moustache area especially, and then make sure that you trim your beard carefully. Try and remove any excessively thick parts of the beard, and the process should become a bit simpler. Your final taper will be more extreme if you leave lots of hair and thickness, so keep that in mind.

Length matters, so make sure that you take the time to get the length as good as it can be.

Then, move to the neckline

Once you have everything at a decent length and level that you can look in the mirror and admire, move onto the neckline. The neckline is hard to get right, so always start under the jaw and then move from side to side. You should probably try and get your hands on the best pair of clippers possible for this. 

The sharper the finish, the better the whole thing is going to look.

As such, try and leave a finger just above your Adam’s apple. If you do that, then you can use that as your guide – just make sure you don’t catch your finger. It’s going to take a bit of practice, but starting with the neckline gives you the easier task later. Get the hardest bit of beard maintenance out of the way, and you should soon notice a positive difference as you go about shaping your neckline.

Move on to your cheeks

The next hardest part for a lot of guys is getting the cheek area right. You should probably try and taper your cheekline beard section to be as sharp and as tight as you possibly can. It should be slightly rounded, if you can get it, and it should go to the bottom of your sideburns up to where your moustache begins. If you do that, then you should get a nice, clean line.

It’s going ot be tough to get right, so at the very least make sure you deal with any excess hairs. Most guys will have kind of whisker-like beard hair on the cheeks, so deal with them at the very least. When doing the cheeks, precision is vital, but it should be a bit easier than the neckline area. Just take your time and remember it should be crisp and finished specifically. 

Finish off with a fade

We recommend now that you start going around your jawline with a trimmer setting that is one setting down from the length you used for everything else. try and get close to your sideburns and go as close as you can. Then, try and turn it down another level once again, and start taking it closer to the sideburns.

Rinse and repeat that in gradual increments, and you should get a very nice blend. Basically, you want your beard to line-up perfectly with the sideburns of your hair. Once you get that right, you’ve got a stylish, tapered beard that won’t look wild any longer. 

It’s going to take practice, but just keep at it and you’ll soon be happy with the overall results.