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It’s Terminal (Beard Length) – Let’s Talk

June 7, 2016 By //  by The Beardsgaards

While we believe beards of all shapes and sizes are awesome, length is the end all be all goal for a lot of dudes. When it comes to potential beard length, there are two schools of belief:

Terminal Beard Length Gallery

  1. Your beard just keeps growing, and with enough time and patience, any man who can fill in a decent beard can get competition-big.
  2. Beards at some point will reach a terminal length and stop growing.

So which is it? Not to burst any bubbles, but it’s not the first one. And the second one comes with a slew of caveats. Let’s talk terminal. And science.

Keep reading for our barberly secret to a bigger beard…


What is Terminal Length?

“Terminal length” is a scary term, but what does it actually mean? Is it the length where your beard stops growing? Short answer: sort of? Here’s the longer answer.

Your Hair’s Circle of Life

There are three types of hair: vellus/languo hair is the downy monkey fuzz that covers humans in their entirety, except our palms, soles, lips and eyelids. Primary Terminal Hair (look, it’s that word again) applies to eyebrows and eyelashes.

Secondary Terminal Hair is all the other stuff-chest, back, legs, arms, scalp, beard, and…other places. But our focus is not on those fun bits today, we are looking squarely at your beard, sir. Let’s take a look at your beard’s circle of life.

The Anagen Phase

This is the go time phase where those stem cells of yours are cranking out keratinized cells in the hair follicle. These cells keep at it anywhere from several weeks (for mustaches and the like) to 10 years (for some lucky scalps). This cycle in scalp hair averages 3-5 years, beards seem to average, and let us put a heavy emphasis on average, about two years. This is what 90% of your hair is doing at any one time.

The Catagen Phase

After all that exertion, your cells need to chill for a minute. During this transition phase the follicle shrinks, the hair bulb disappears, and the shrunken root end forms a round club-like thing. Weeks, this part takes, not months, and less than 1% of your hair is doing it at any one time.

The Telogen Phase

This is the death part. During this final resting phase, your hair sheds, or is sometimes held in place for a bit, but it’s coming out at some point.

What the Hell Does that Mean?

Okay, that’s a bunch of technical jumblies there. Here’s how that translates to your day to day life with your beard. Your beard grows, hibernates then sheds. Depending on your beard’s rate of cycling through these phases, your hair has a certain time frame to get as long as it can before things shut down.

The most important thing to remember in your beardventure is that every beard is indeed a special snowflake. Every face grows differently, in different amounts and annoyingly, in different amounts over different parts of the face.

Don’t be surprised if you have to trim different parts more, and more often than others. What you generally don’t want to do is allow those overachiever bits to be your guide to length. Trim to the lowest common denominator, lest you end up looking like a goat.

Just remember that growing your beard is a journey, not a destination. It will go through phases where it doesn’t seem to be making much progress, then growth picks up again, but it is a law of diminishing returns. Eventually you’ll go terminal.

The Secret to a Bigger Beard

While there are plenty of products out there that promise you the beard of your dreams, there is no quick fix. Keeping it occasionally trimmed, well-moisturized and well-cared for won’t necessarily help it grow more, but it can definitely help prevent length lost to damage.

The best trick is one no one likes to hear: be healthier.

Hair, skin and nail condition are all drastically affected by overall health. So drink your water, eat your dark leafy greens, drink less alcohol, stop smoking, work out…you know, all those things you were planning on doing anyway, right?

But if those don’t sound like things that are going to happen, just keep your face creature well-tended, bring your patience shoes, and have a good time on the journey.


Have some beard woes and need some barberly advice? Tell us all about it in the comments.

Filed Under: Beards & Facial Hair, Blog, From the Chair Tagged With: Ask Your Barber, Beards, Evergreen Terrace, Grooming, How To, Mustaches, Pillar

About The Beardsgaards

The Beardsgaards are a pair of mom-and-pop barber nerds with a shared obsession with perfection. We built this old school barbershop to feel like home to everyone who enters beneath the Elvish script above our door. If we and the Gaardian army can give you a better handle on your grooming routine, all the better.

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With several recent, very public examples of the c With several recent, very public examples of the continuation of police brutality in America, it's hard not to feel helpless. And frustrated. And tired. But just like actively being anti-racist isn't an option, neither is taking a break. There are countless grassroots organizations that are doing the difficult work of changing legislation, hearts and minds every day. Even when the big stories have faded, and the cameras have left. They don't stop when they're tired, because it's not an option. So what can you do?

First: donate to those tireless organizations that benefit people of color and marginalized individuals.
Second: outwardly show your solidarity.  Did our solidarity with Black Lives Matter lead to us losing clients, and aggression towards us as a business? Yes. Do we care about that? No. Because for every loud person that yelled at us for our BLM fist and pride flag in the window, there were people that saw it as a head nod that said, "We see you. We're with you."

People passed our shop and felt safe, and that feeling of home and safety is why Beardsgaard is the shop that it is. We will continue to show solidarity because at the end of the day, everyone deserves to have basic human rights. People deserve to be able to sleep in their own bed, walk down the street with a sandwich, talk on the phone to their mom, unlock their own front door, hold a bag of skittles, sit on a couch and eat ice cream… 

So while our Wear It For Good section has grown in the past year, all of our designs are still up and all the profits being donated to different charities and organizations. 

Donate and show your solidarity with our Wear It For Good section of our #webshoppe {Link in Bio}.
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Our Little Slice of Valhalla

In historic downtown Batavia on Route 31 between 1st and Main

117 S Batavia Ave, Batavia, IL 60510

PHONE: ( 630 ) 454 - 4820

EMAIL: shop@beardsgaardbarbers.com

Parking

Loads of free parking here, both on the street in front of the shop, with an even more substantial parking lot in back.

Shop Hours

• Sun - Mon / Closed

• Tue - Wed 10 / 6

• Thu - Fri 12 / 8

• Sat 9 / 3

Closed for Shop Lunch Tue + Wed 2-3 pm / Thu + Fri 3-4 pm

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