Beard oil is one of the most essential products that any beardsman can own. Given its awesome blend of carrier and essential oils, beard oil can make your beard go from looking just “meh” to unbelievably good.
From beardruff to beard itch, and the general texture of how your beard feels, the benefits are far and wide. We will go into each one specifically in just a moment.
But before we do, its important to understand the composition of beard oil and what exactly these ingredients do when applied to your beard.
Editors note: If you want to skip ahead, be sure to check out our in-depth guide on the best beard oils that we reviewed.
You can also find some great beard oils listed in our guide at online retailers.
Here is also a quick video that I put together outlining the basics of beard oil:
To Understand The Benefits of Beard Oil, You Must Understand The Ingredients Within The Bottle
Any high quality beard oil is typically made up of two distinct ingredients, a carrier oil and an essential oil.
In some cases, the higher end beard oils may included added ingredients like Vitamin E, which delivers key vitamins for healthy hair and skin care.
Carrier oils themselves will typically deliver many of the core benefits of any given beard oil as they make up about 90% of the actual oil.
Typically derived from seeds and nuts, carrier oils are completely all natural with the most popular ones typically are jojoba (pronounced “ho-ho-ba”), argan, sweet almond, grapeseed, and several others.
These oils are often found in several different beauty products besides just beard oil. If you typically purchase higher end beauty or all natural products, you will see ingredients such as jojoba in shampoos, soaps, creams, lotions, etc.
The reason why these oils are so vastly used in beauty products is due to them being completely all natural and having terrific hydrating/moisturizing abilities for your skin and hair follicles.
Instead of using a mixture of chemicals to achieve the same hydrating effects for your skin, a decent carrier oil will deliver the same if not better moisturizing and nourishing abilities.
We will touch on why this moisture is so important in just a moment, but before we do, lets also examine essential oils:
Many of the more expensive beard oils will typically included several essential oils in addition to a carrier oil. These oils, that are extremely volatile and are required to be diluted by a carrier oil before application to your skin, are the life of the party.
Coming in several different scents ranging from citrus and lavender to sandalwood and tea tree, the options are truly limitless when trying to determine a scent for any beard oil.
Traditionally speaking, beard oils that cost more typically will contain several essential oils within the solution as essential oils are by themselves relatively pricey when compared to carrier oils.
Many price conscious beardsmen do often times decide to pick up just a bottle of jojoba or argan oil and directly apply it to their skin as beard as they will be able to achieve many of the same benefits as any sort of beard oil.
But you shouldn’t initially scoff off using essential oils without trying them out first. Many essential oils are used for natural remedies of which can be pretty effective. For instance, an essential oil such as sandalwood or tea tree are natural anti-septics, therefore when applied to your skin, these essential oils may actually do a really good job in clearing out your pores to reduce the occurrence of acne.
Now if you are put off by strong smells like me, don’t be too worried about beard oil smelling to overwhelming. Typically the scents of beard oil may smell a bit stronger at first but will quickly reside after a short amount of time.
Therefore its important to remember, the essential oils within beard oil aren’t a cologne, they are a complimentary scent.
Last to touch on is the cheap beard oils. Recently there has been an uptick in the number of imitation beard oil products making its way to the market. These oils typically contain chemicals that simulate a slippery feeling (i.e. silicone) and deliver zero benefits to your skin and beard. Therefore its strongly recommended that you steer clear of these products. Secondly, if a beard oil doesn’t have its ingredients listed on the bottle, you should pass on purchasing it. Now to note, some fancy/highly marketed beard oils like to use a botanical or scientific name instead of the carrier/essential oil name. Therefore Google is your friend, if you see Simmondsia chinensis, this is really just jojoba oil.
Here’s How Beard Oil Will Help You Get Rid Of That Dreaded Beard Itch
Just about every man that grows a beard after about one month will start to notice that it gets a bit itchy. While some beardsmen like to just “push through” this phase, this discomfort is completely unnecessary with the added use of beard oil.
To understand why your beard is getting itchy, its important to look at what is going on with the skin beneath your beard and how beard oil plays a role.
At the root of every one of your beard follicles, you have a pair of glands called sebaceous glands. These glands are key to making sure that your beard stays well nourished. The sebaceous glands create this oil called sebum oil.
As your beard follicle gets longer, it simply requires more and more sebum oil to coat the follicle while also keep your skin well nourished and moisturized.
One important key to understand, is that no matter the length of your beard, your sebaceous glands stay the same size. Given that they are finite in size, their sebum oil production can’t effectively keep up with the demand of your beard follicle.
To illustrate this, check out the following graph:
As you can see, no matter the length of your beard, sebum oil remains constant. Therefore when your beard gets to a certain length (every man is different but typically after a few weeks of growth), their sebum oil just simply isn’t enough.
This is when your beard and more importantly, your skin becomes dried out and itchy.
Therefore the introduction of beard oil will actually act as a supplement to your sebum oil making the dreaded beard itch go away while also giving it the proper nourishment that it is seeking.
But Beard Itch is Only Half The Story, How Do You Get Rid of Beardruff
As we covered above, when you slop on some beard oil to your beard, you are essentially splashing a much needed bucket of water onto your face.
It literally is like an aftershave, only you didn’t shave at all!
When you don’t use any sort of beard oil on your skin for an extended period of time and are constantly itching it due to irritation, beardruff will be born.
Beardruff is essentially dandruff for your beard. Your skin is so dry that when you start to itch it, the skin begins to flake causing white specs of beardruff to show up on your shirt.
While we have been concentrating a lot about your skin care with beard oil, it does actually help make your beard feel a lot softer, but also look great as well:
Maintaining Your Beard Better with Beard Oil
When you slop on some beard oil, your beard will start to become a bit more maintained and less tangled.
Therefore if your beard is feeling a bit scraggly or straw-like, regular application of beard oil will help in making it feel much better.
This regular use of beard oil will also help with the reduction of split ends occurring. If you are taking your beard growing seriously, the reduction of split ends will be good news as you won’t have to trim your beard nearly as often.
In addition to the feel of your beard, the general appearance of your beard will also improve with the introduction of beard oil.
The follicles of your beard will look a little bit shinier and healthier.
Learning How To Apply Beard Oil
Applying beard oil is actually a pretty straightforward process.
In fact you can just put about a dime sized amount into the palm of your hand and rub it in from the base and work the way to the ends.
Once applied thoroughly, you will want to use one of the best beard combs for styling.
I’m Convinced: Now Where Do I Get Beard Oil?
Beard oil has gotten incredibly popular over the past couple of years. It seems as though every day there are new beard oil manufacturers popping up and selling some excellent quality oils.
While we could list a few beard oil vendors, we don’t want to show preference to one brand over the other. In fact we did compile a list of some of the more popular vendors in this post here.
If its your first ever time picking up a beard oil, we do recommend checking out an online marketplace given their low shipping costs and easy return policy that you may not be able to get if you oder from a boutique vendor.
In addition, on Amazon, many of the most popular beard oil company brands do sell their flagship oils on there as well.
If you are looking for a bit of guidance on selecting your very first beard oil, we do recommend that you check out this epic post that we put together on determining what the best beard oil is.
Alternatively, if you are more of an analytical guy that loves numbers, we recently compared 80 beard oils on the Amazon marketplace objectively to determine which one provide the greatest value based on pricing data, reviews, and ratings (we have an awesome chart there to see it all visually as well!).
Last but not least, if you are a hands on kinda guy and are taking your beard growing seriously, you should check out this post on how to make your own beard oil.
Now as a word of caution, making your own beard oil isn’t for everybody. In fact, the upfront cost to make your own beard oil will be a bit more than actually buying beard oil off the shelf. However though, just about with anything that you do yourself, the long term savings are going to be much higher than buying the retail beard oil every time (hint: about $5 an ounce for DIY beard oil vs $25 retail beard oil).
While The Benefits of Beard Oil Are Vast, What About Beard Balm?
This is a question that I get a lot!
You see why not ditch the oil and go straight for the beard balm?
Well you can…in some instances.
If you make the plunge to get your very own beard balm you MUST make sure that it has conditioners.
Many men may think that a beard wax is the same as a beard balm. However though these two products serve completely different cases.
If you want to enter into the annual World Beard and Moustache Championship, these guys are using beard wax heavily to form their beard into unique shapes.
Beard balm however, does contain beeswax, but it also contains other key ingredients like carrier and essential oils (as does beard oil), along with the extra moisturizing agent shea or cocoa butter.
Therefore, you just need to be mindful of looking at the ingredients on the beard balm to make sure your beard isn’t losing out on any of the essential nutrients that it needs as well as preventing beardruff.
Thinking about picking up a beard balm instead but unsure which one to get? Be sure to check out our in-depth guide on selecting the very best beard balm.
Last But Not Least, Don’t Forget To Pick Up a Beard Comb Or Brush
When first starting to take your beard comb or brush, many men may use a girlfriend or wife’s comb or just head to the corner drug store and pick up the cheapest one that they can find.
Unfortunately these alternatives aren’t the best to use on your beard.
Instead if you prefer a brush, you should pick up one that is made of boars hair bristle as this fiber does an excellent job in trapping in the carrier and essential oils and helping distribute them along the skin and beard follicles.
Beard combs on the other hand are terrific for styling purposes and not so much for the distribution of oils.
In our beard comb vs brush show down we deep dive into each of these unique beard tools a bit more. If you prefer to skip the heavy reading and just want to know which one is best, be sure to check out or review of the best beard brush here, and the review of the best beard comb here.
