Let’s face it. Most men who can’t grow beards, or their beard grows in patchy and thin, would like some help in enhancing the growth and thickness.
Beard growth products rarely deliver on their promises and the manufacturers lack scientific proof on most of their claims. In most cases a simple multivitamin supplement works better than any beard growth product on the market.
To meet that demand from men who desperately seek products for beard growth, a huge industry has popped up, which serves various types of products (oils, lotions, balms, sprays, etc) with big claims and little to no evidence backing up their claims.
And when I say big claims, I do mean that…
Take Beard Farmers Beard Growth Oil for example, which literally claims it would grow your beard six times faster than normal – and still, even with this claim that is clearly bogus, their product is flying off the shelves.
And beard growth oils are not the only thing out there. You got people selling beard growth pills, beard growth serums, beard growth creams, even beard growth shampoo.
The people manufacturing and marketing those are smart. They know there are hundreds of millions of beardless men frantically searching for that magic-pill to fill out their facial hair.
And where there are demand and desperation for a solution, there will always be a lot of money to be made, and plenty of greedy salesmen looking to cash in – even if they knew their solution wouldn’t work.
“To summarize beard growth products; they usually don’t work.”
Out of the thousands of beard enhancers out there, only a handful have any credible evidence backing them up (and I’m not talking about fake reviews, but actual scientific studies and unaltered before-after pictures).
Today, we are going to look at all of the different beard growth products out there, and see which work and which don’t work.
Ready to get started with the list of best and worst beard growth boosters? Let’s hop right in then. ↓
Each Type of Beard Growth Product Explained
Minoxidil (Rogaine)
Let’s start the list with the only facial hair growth product that does work and the only one that is backed up by actual scientific study as well.
It’s minoxidil (Rogaine), which you might recognize as one of the most widely sold over-the-counter baldness medicine.
It has dozens of credible studies supporting its ability to grow new hair on top of the scalp, but that’s not enough to say it would grow a beard (since the head hair is different from the androgen-driven facial hair).
“However, as luck would have it, minoxidil has also been studied on its ability to grow androgenic-hair, such as the facial hair and chest hair.”
The study on its facial hair enhancing effects had 48 male subjects. The first group used a 3% liquid minoxidil solution on their beards for 16-weeks, and the second group used a placebo solution for the same amount of time.
The results?
Minoxidil absolutely skyrocketed the amount of new facial hairs on the 3cm test areas measured from the subjects before and after the study.
Of course, this research only confirms what 50,000+ men have seen anecdotally in places like the Minox Beard Spot (a FaceBook group of people actively growing beards with Rogaine)…
And all of the thousands of before-after photos that show very clearly how minoxidil effectively grows beards, even on people who had practically no facial hair, to begin with.
But how does this beard growth product work?
- It opens up potassium-channels in the beard follicles.
- It stimulates angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels).
- It dilates the follicles and improves blood circulation.
- It increases the prostaglandin E2, which stimulates the follicles.
The drawback of minoxidil is that it will take quite some time to work (usually 3-12 months minimum) and you have to use it pretty religiously during that time to make the results permanent.
Another drawback is that it’s not completely free of side effects, and you will likely experience skin dryness under your whiskers, occasional fatigue, changes in blood pressure, and sometimes dizziness.
We have a big mega-post about minoxidil for beards here, and another post about the most frequently asked questions on how to use it, etc.
“There is no question about it, minoxidil is the only scientifically proven product for beard growth available.”
If you just want the quick and dirty tips on how to use minoxidil properly, here’s what to do…
- Get either 5% minoxidil liquid or 5% minoxidil foam.
- Use ~2ml per day, twice per day, until your beard is full.
- Make sure to leave it on for 4-hours before washing it off.
Once you’re sure the facial hair has turned from vellus to terminal, you may quit using it, and the results are permanent.
Any type of minoxidil brand works, as long as it’s just pure minoxidil with carrier liquids. The brand is irrelevant, it could be Rogaine, Equate, Tugain, etc.
Beard Growth Oil
Beard growth oil is the most sold facial hair growing product out there, and the most heavily-marketed.
Why?
That’s what people think first, and that is what they search for online, and the marketers and manufacturers tap in on that desperate market.
And when you search for beard growth oils, you will find things like:
- The Beard Farmer’s Growther Oil
- The Beard Flux by Beardilizer
- Ustraa Beard Growth Oil (popular in India)
- The Dollar Beard Club Growth Oils
- And many many more.
What makes all of the above products – and all of beard growth oils – similar, is the fact that they do not work.
I repeat. Beard growth oils do not work. They do nothing to enhance your facial hair growth. Nothing whatsoever.
Their ineffectiveness is glaringly obvious when you just take a brief moment to look at their ingredients lists.
Most often, oils intended for beard growth, use the exact same ingredients you see in regular beard oils (which do not claim growth benefits).
And that’s all there is. There are no special growth-promoting ingredients in the oils. Just the basic moisturizing oils you see in every other regular beard oil.
Since normal beard oil does not promote growth, why would you expect a special beard growth oil with the exact same ingredients to do it?
Currently, there’s only one essential oil that has some evidence of it possibly being able to enhance hair growth, and that is the peppermint essential oil (Mentha × Piperita), but the thing is that you can buy a bottle of it for few bucks and dilute it with some jojoba oil yourself.
You don’t need to buy an expensive bottle of beard growth oil. Usually, they don’t even have the peppermint oil, but they do make sure to use oils that block DHT and could hurt – not help – your beard growing ability.
So the bottom line is this: Beard growth oils do not work. The only oil with some promising research is peppermint essential oil (PEO).
Beard Growth Pills
Type in “best beard growth products” to any search engine and you will be presented with dozens of articles talking about beard growth vitamins.
Now do vitamins help you grow a better beard?
Yes, they actually do. Not massively, but at least making sure that you’re not deficient in any of the key ones will make a difference for the better.
Things like vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin E, boron, biotin, zinc, magnesium, and many of the vitamins from the B-complex play crucial parts in the synthesis of beard hairs and they also help to increase and maintain the levels of your beard growing hormones (testosterone and DHT).
Would I still recommend the special beard pills, you know the ones with a big beard logo slapped into the middle of the bottle?
No. I honestly would not.
Sure, these beard growth vitamins like Beardilizer, Vitabeard, etc all have a decent amount of vitamins in them, and some are important for facial hair growth…
“But beard growth vitamins are also extremely expensive (cost-per-capsule) when compared to just basic multivitamin supplements that don’t say “beard” in the bottles.”
And they do not offer anything special in their formulations that would make them any different.
In fact, special beard growth vitamins are usually made from lower quality micronutrients than the basic multivitamins out there, even though the price is much much higher.
So yes, vitamins do help your beard growth to some extent, but getting them from nutritious beard growth-promoting foods and basic multivitamin supplements would be a better idea than wasting your money on over-priced and under-performing beard pills.
Beard Growth Cream, Lotion, & Balm
Beard growth creams, lotions, and balms are not as common as the growth oils and supplements, but they are still sold a lot.
And often by the same people that are pushing you the oils and pills.
Do beard growth creams and such work then?
No, they don’t. It’s the same thing as with the growth oils, the ingredients do not differ from regular beard balms and creams (those that claim no growth benefits).
“These lotions are just another way to cash out on the beardless men who are desperately seeking for that silver-bullet that would jump-start their growth.”
I just recently saw one of these companies offering a bundle of their beard growth products – growth oil, growth pills, and growth cream – for $159.
That’s an insane amount of money for a 30 day supply of supplements, 1 oz bottle of oil that has no growth-promoting ingredients, and a 2 oz tin of cream that also, has no beard-growing ingredients in it.
To put that into context, you could use that money to buy 11 months supply of minoxidil (the only scientifically proven beard enhancer) and in that time you would likely be able to grow a full beard with it.
Use the “beard growth bundle” with balms and creams and stuff for a year and you would be about $1908 poorer and likely have no new beard hairs as a result.
Beard Growth Shampoo
Think about the short amount of time that beard shampoo is on your facial hair.
Few seconds, right?
Now could there be anything in the World that would be so powerful, that just having it in your skin for a few seconds would stimulate facial hair growth?
If you answered; hell no! You would be correct, as there most certainly is no such thing in existence.
And then think about this…
There is literally a beard growth product that is sold as dedicated beard growth shampoo, a few of them to be honest.
Even the dumbest, most gullible person could be able to tell you that you can’t grow a beard by shampooing it. Yet, these products are absolutely killing it, and selling so much that it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Sure, it probably helps you clean your beard. But does it improve growth? Jesus, no… I can’t believe I even had to say it.
Beard Growth Spray & Serum
The best beard growth serum out there could technically be minoxidil. And if we go by that, then yeah, some beard growth serums & sprays do indeed work.
But I’m sorry to disappoint you by saying that minoxidil is likely the only growth serum that actually does work.
The rest? They are nothing short of rubbish, on par with beard growth oils and creams.
“The chances of these products doing anything other than hurting your ability to speed up beard growth are zero.”
Things like the BioTopic Beard Activator, Maxx Beard Volumizer Serum, Copenhagen Grooming Beard Activator Serum, etc all contain just natural carrier oils, water, essential oils, and usually even beard growth suppressing DHT-blocker ingredients like saw palmetto and curcumin.
Not even pure faith or the placebo effect could be strong enough to make them do anything on your face.
So please. If you want to use a beard growth spray, just go to your local CVS and buy a bottle of Kirkland Minoxidil, don’t waste your money on obvious fake serums with no evidence, no before-afters, and fake reviews.
Beard Rollers
One of the biggest underground facial hair growing tools that have been used for several years now, is the Derma Roller, aka Beard Roller.
Most commonly it’s used alongside with minoxidil – and the two appear to support each other in helping you stimulate facial growth, and especially in activating dormant facial hair follicles.
There’s one study that confirms this (though I must add that it was conducted on scalp-hair).
In the study, balding men used minoxidil in conjunction with a micro-needling device (Derma Roller) and their results were then compared to a group of men who used only minoxidil.
“As to be expected, both groups did regrow hair – but much to the surprise of the researchers, using the Derma Roller absolutely skyrocketed the effects of minoxidil.”
In the study, the men were using a 3mm needle-length device. This is pretty brutal to use on your facial hair skin, as it’s less thick than your scalp.
Due to the thinner skin of the face, most beardsmen who use Derma Rollers recommend a needle-length of 0.5-0.75mm. That’s is big enough to stimulate the circulation and reach the epidermis, but not too big so that it would hurt or cause any scarring.
If you want to learn more about why microneedle therapy is so effective for beard growth, how to do it, etc. then read our bigger guide on the topic.
Conclusion
So, do beard growth products work?
In our opinion, no.
At least not the majority of them. Minoxidil and Derma Roller appear to be the only ones with actual scientific evidence, and even those are not marketed for beard growth!
I realize that I’m quickly gaining a big list of enemies with posts like this, but it’s okay.
I can sleep my nights much better when I’m on this side of the story, instead of trying to peddle ineffective facial hair growth products as the magic-bullet to beardless men that are desperately trying to make their whiskers grow.
Think we missed a beard growth enhancer from this list? Let us know in the comments below and I will take a look at their claims.
As always, thanks for reading and keep on beardin’.
