7 Proven Techniques to Make Your Stubble Softer and More Comfortable
Is your stubble beard hard and brittle? Does your partner feel like they rubbed their face against sandpaper? Well, we’ve got good news; you can soften your stubble. People no longer need to suffer every time you show affection.
Interestingly, a beard can indicate surprising things about your health. Therefore, if your beard feels too hard and brittle, something’s not right, and you need to act fast.
Read on to learn how to make your scratchy, rough, and sharp stubble as soft as cotton.
Key Takeaways
- Wash beard 2-3 times a week with a mild moisturizing beard wash or top-quality nourishing beard conditioner
- Use beard oil to improve beard’s texture and appearance
- Grow beard longer for more even edges and uniform distribution
- Moisturize facial skin for better stubble texture
- Shave close outside beard borders for smoother skin
- Brush beard regularly to spread oil evenly and separate clamped hairs
- Use a high-quality beard softening pad to reduce harshness
What Makes a Stubble Beard Feel Hard and Sharp?
What makes stubble feel sharp is short facial hair. Short hairs have sharper and more uneven edges, causing them to feel abrasive to the touch.
Another common cause of sharp stubble is that it’s dry and brittle because you’re cleaning it too much and not moisturizing enough.
It may also be that you’re not drinking enough water. Dehydration causes dry hair and split ends. Coupled with harsh weather conditions like wind and sun, this can cause facial hair to feel sharp, coarse, and prickly.
When the skin beneath a beard lacks moisture, stubble feels dry and brittle. The secret of how to soften stubble and make it softer is ensuring optimal moisture levels in your beard.
7 Simple Ways to Soften Your Stubble Beard
Below are some tips and tricks to help soften your stubble. Applying these tips, most of which are good beard grooming practices and habits, will go a long way in making your beard look and feel better.
1. Wash Your Stubble Beard Properly
How often do you wash your beard? While it’s not advisable to give your beard a thorough scrubbing too often, it’s crucial to keep it clean and have a proper beard washing routine.
One mistake most men make is washing their stubble with a standard hair shampoo. The aftermath of this can be detrimental to your beard in the long run.
Regular scalp shampoo contains numerous chemicals that can wash away all the natural growth hormones for your beard. In addition, the shampoo can hinder your face from secreting sebum oil, which is a naturally occurring oil that your body produces to nourish the skin. What happens then is your facial hair dries, becoming itchy and scratchy.
Then, what is the best way to wash your stubble? Wash your beard only two to three times a week and ensure you use a mild moisturizing beard wash or top-quality nourishing beard conditioner that’s free of harsh artificial chemicals. Also, it should not have ingredients that can potentially hurt your stubble beard.
Using these products aids in removing dead skin cells, dirt, and oil from your facial skin’s top layer, making it softer. Additionally, it unclogs the hair shafts’ bases.
A proper wash will help with separating any stubble hairs that may have clumped together, improving the overall beard texture, and making it smoother and softer.
2. Try Beard Oil
Well, it might sound ridiculous and contradictory asking you to replace the oil you just washed away with more oil. However, while the oil you eliminated was clogging up your beard shaft bases, commercial beard oils serve the opposite purpose.
These oils are specifically formulated to maintain your beard as they contain vital oils such as jojoba oil and argan oil. Apart from these oils softening your stubble beard, they make hair shafts healthier and give your beard a shiny appearance.
Applying the right beard oil can round out and smooth the sharp edges in your stubble, reducing the abrasiveness you feel when you touch it.
Remember, the best results come when you use the oil on a dry beard. That way, the oil doesn’t get washed off but remains on the hair and skin.
In addition, we advise you don’t apply beard oil on a wet beard because it is likely that the hairs will clump together, and there will be no benefits to individual shafts. What’s more, the water will make the oil less effective by diluting the nourishing agents contained in it.
Apply the oil by massaging it gently on your entire beard and use a brush to spread it on the whole beard evenly. With beard oils, you can transform the feel, scent, and look in your stubble.
3. Grow Your Stubble Longer
We recommend you grow your stubble longer because it’s common for shorter hair to be sharper and pricklier.
If your stubble is feeling coarse right now, that’s likely because it’s too short. Try a heavy or medium stubble. For sure, the feeling will be different. Longer hair has more even edges and achieves a more uniform distribution.
That said, it’s worth noting that you should still trim your beard now and then to maintain the softness and avoid split ends.
4. Moisturize Your Stubble
Most of us only focus on the hair itself. We forget that achieving a glorious beard requires taking care of the facial skin too.
A well-hydrated neck and face will also improve your stubble’s texture. Immediately after a cut, you’re likely to feel the skin is coarse to the touch, irritating, and dry. Applying a moisturizer at that point hydrates the irritated skin, protecting and softening the hair as well.
It’s important to note that skin and beard care go hand in hand. Hence, if you want to achieve a softer stubble looking after the underlying skin well is inevitable.
5. Shave Close Outside the Borders
We recommend you work towards making the areas above the cheek line and below the neckline as hairless as possible. These are areas where your beard doesn’t reach.
A close shave is not as easy as it sounds. It requires you to cut the hair as close to your skin as you can. After a close shave, what you should only be feeling is smooth skin. Very short hair that’s not noticeable can never feel rough.
Whether you prefer using an electric shaver or a manual razor, try as much as you can to achieve a close shave outside your stubble beard borders.
6. Brush Your Beard
Brushing your stubble, especially after oiling, is essential. It helps spread the oil evenly on your beard. Additionally, brushing separates any hairs that may have clamped together.
Medium and heavy stubble, in particular, need regular combing because beard hair grows in different directions, causing it to look untidy, patchy, and rough.
However, combing directs the hairs in whichever way you want. With regular brushing, chances are the beard will keep growing in the direction you comb.
That said, we advise that you don’t comb your beard more than twice a day since frequent combing may damage the hair.
One more thing: ensure you use a quality brush or comb.
7. Use a High-Quality Beard Softening Pad
Softening pads reduce the beard’s harshness. The pads round down the uneven and sharp edges of your hair shafts responsible for coarse stubble, resulting in a softer stubble beard that feels gentle to the touch. Plus, you can use these softening pads even as your beard grows longer.
A good quality softening pad should not scratch your skin. Instead, it should be gentle on it while at the same time fulfilling its purpose. Just try it out and watch the results.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it; the seven secrets of how to soften your stubble. Though not all of them may work for you, we assure you some will. Remember, a healthy, nice-looking, softer stubble doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll need to take great care to achieve great facial hair.
