Growing a beard takes self-discipline and patience. It takes time to grow and time to maintain, but when you get it right, it can look awesome and give you a much needed confidence boost.
A lot of guys think that investing in beard balm, or beard oil, is the way to have a soft, shiny and manageable beard.
However, that’s missing the foundation that can make this goal easier to achieve. It’s no good washing your beard hair and underlying skin with normal shampoo, or soap and water. To get the best beard, you need to use a specialist beard shampoo.
But what goes into a beard shampoo to make it great? How do you know which one to use, and how effective it is going to be?
So let’s answer those questions right now to find out exactly what makes a great beard shampoo, and give you some recommendations to help you to choose the best beard shampoo, giving you the best possible beard.
Best Beard Shampoo
What Is Beard Shampoo And Why Do I Need It?
The key to strong and striking beard is to have a great routine that uses the right products. Without care and attention, you are never going to reach your full potential.
A good beard shampoo, or beard wash as it is sometimes known, can really help to create a great foundation for the hair to grow, and for you to then use other products to enhance its appearance once the hair and skin are clean.
The best beard shampoo is so much better than using soap and water, or water alone.
A specialist beard shampoo will help to cleanse the hair, remove dirt and grease, and also help get rid of the sebum that can make your beard feel lank. Sebum is the natural oil our skin pores produce, but sometimes it can create that greasy feeling, especially if it is left to its own devices.
How Is Beard Shampoo Different To Hair Shampoo?
You might think that hair on your body is the same wherever it is. But a beard contains a different type of hair in terms of its usually being more rough, exposed to shaving, meaning more split ends and underlying skin in poor condition, which is known as beard dandruff.
Standard hair shampoo contains detergents and artificial substances to strip the hair. This is why you need a separate conditioner, or sometimes a combined shampoo and conditioner, to repair the damage the shampoo has done. This problem is made worse if you use normal shampoo on your beard, especially as most people would not think to apply conditioner.
Beard shampoo is specifically formulated:
Tips For Using Beard Shampoo
There is actually no point in buying the best beard shampoo if you are not using it effectively.
There is no great secret to using beard shampoo, but taking a few tips on board can really help to set your beard up to benefit from being further condition with a good quality beard oil or balm.
In terms of using a beard shampoo:
- Dampen the beard with warm water.
- Use a small amount of shampoo and work it into your hands until it starts to lather.
- Gently apply it to the beard, using your fingers to work it thoroughly into the beard and skin, creating a lather. Continue to massage it in for a couple of minutes.
- Thoroughly wash the shampoo straight off with warm water. Some people leave beard shampoo on for a while, but it does not condition and if left on can have a drying effect on the skin and hair.
- Gently smooth dry the beard hair with a soft towel, mostly rubbing in the direction the hair grows to avoid breakage.
Best Beard Shampoo: Our Top Three Recommended
Our number one beard shampoo choice is actually also the cheapest of our three recommendations.
Mountaineer are an established brand in beard grooming products, and produce high quality for a fair price, which is part of the reason we think their beard wash rocks.
And we are not alone in that thought, with 83% five star positive reviews on Amazon. Guys love it’s scent, quality and how it leaves their beard feeling:
“Nothing bad to say about this beard wash! I own a number of other Mountaineer Brand products and they all perform as advertised. This beard wash is particularly nice because it doesn’t leave my beard feeling “squeaky clean” like some other beard washes, but instead cleans my beard without stripping the natural oils, all while applying a subtle amount of oils during washing. After use I usually apply a few drops of beard oil anyways since my beard is pretty long, but a lot of people may not even need the extra care. The scent is a light pine, which is by far my favorite scent of any beard/mustache product. It lathers nicely with only a small amount. I’ve made this last for around 4-5months washing once a day.”
Mountaineer has all the characteristics we have talked about to give you that perfect clean beard and face to build on:
It’s this combination of a great price, mixed with great ingredients that make Mountainee beard wash our number one choice.
riced at a very reasonable $12.99 for a good-sized tube, Grave Before Shave Beard Wash Shampoo comes in at number two in our top three of the best beard shampoos.
On Amazon it has 85% five-star reviews, and just like us, people love the quality and simplicity of this beard wash:
“Great beard wash right here. I use a dime-sized amount that I lather between my hands before working into a wet beard, and it works up the perfect lather. I usually wash my beard every 2-3 days (no need to do it every day, I’ve found), and after six months, I still have about a quarter of the tube left. No beard itch, and barely any dandruff. As others have mentioned, it has a very light scent that doesn’t persist once you rinse it out. They don’t load this shampoo up with fragrances, which is really nice.”
What makes it such a safe choice for anybody is the attention to detail in its construction:
Grave Before Shave is a high quality beard wash, and it’s only the slightly higher price and inclusion of a couple of non-organic ingredients which have kept it off spot.
Coming in at third place is the really high quality beard shampoo from Polished Gentleman.
Although their marketing and language is very cheesy, the product they have created is nothing but quality.
Its ingredients are interesting, it’s not just a shampoo, it also contains shea butter and cocoa butter, amongst other ingredients that make it kind of a hybrid beard shampoo/beard butter.
But it is a shampoo in terms of the fact you use it by lathering it up over your beard and then washing it off. But it claims to do the job of beard butter or beard oil as well, being recommended to use three times a week.
It has 65% five-star reviews on Amazon, which is slightly lower than our other two recommended beard shampoos. There are lots of fans of this product with positive things to say:
“Pure blissful experience. The deep cleaning power, making any long worst short beard fantastically clean to impress the ladies. Thus beard shampoo really does work makes everything nice and clean and helps the growth of the beard doesn’t matter how long it is get to the job done.”
The highlights of this high quality beard shampoo are:
The only concern we have about this beard shampoo is around the claims that it can thicken existing hair and help with hair growth, and it properly accounts for the lower five-star rating
The ingredients don’t seem to marry up with those claims, and certainly user feedback seems to suggest disappointment in this area, which is why it’s down in third spot.
Making Your Decision
So now you know exactly why you need to use a specialist beard shampoo, and exactly how to get the best out of it.
Hopefully we have helped you to decide to try beard shampoo, buy showing you the top three beard shampoo products, which are slightly different in price and design.
Our number one choice Mountaineer Beard Wash is simple to use, contains quality ingredients and has a great user feedback.
Coming in second, Grave Before Shave is also simple and high quality, but has a slightly higher price.
And if you are looking for something different, which could potentially save you from investing in beard oil beard balm, then the extra oil and butter added to third placed Polished Gentleman could be worth experimenting with.
