How to Exfoliate the Beard Like a Boss in 4 Simple & Easy Steps

Most beardsmen know that you should be using beard shampoo and beard conditioner to properly clean the beard.

However, there’s one extra step that most miss, and it can be costly for your beards health and growth rate.

I’m talking about deep-cleaning the skin underneath your beard, aka. beard scrubbing and exfoliation (a key part of a proper beard cleaning routine)

What makes it so important?

Big beards trap dead skin cells and dirt, and beard bacteria easily, which eventually starts to block pores and beard follicles deep down in the beard skin, this can result in a myriad of beard problems, such as beard acne.

To prevent this, all you have to do is to exfoliate the beard area 1-2 per month (yes, that’s enough, just once every two weeks or so).

But how to exfoliate the beard properly? That’s what you will be learning below. ↓

Four Methods to Exfoliating the Facial Hair

1. Beard Exfoliator Scrub

We recently wrote a guide on the best beard exfoliator scrubs, and think they’re some of the easiest products available for the task of scrubbing the under beard skin.

Most of the time these types of scrubs are similar to normal face scrubs, but with the small difference of being a bit runnier (so that they can reach the skin underneath your facial hair).

The exfoliating power usually comes from natural beads like pumice or perlite, and they’re certainly powerful enough to remove trapped dead skin cells, oily build-up from the pores, and help prevent ingrown beard hairs.

However, you should always remember that over-scrubbing the beard is a bad thing because each exfoliating session will always strip away the natural sebum oils from the skin, which are used to moisturize and nourish the facial hair naturally.

Most beard grooming experts agree that you should do a deep-cleansing facial hair exfoliation only once every two weeks or so. That way you can get most of the benefits, without drying up your beard and robbing it from all of the natural oils.

How to Scrub the Beard Using a Beard Exfoliator

1. Thoroughly wash your beard with a good beard shampoo.
2. Pour roughly a nickel-sized amount of beard scrub into your hand.
3. Start vigorously rubbing the exfoliant into your skin underneath the beard.
4. Do this for 30-60 seconds, then thoroughly rinse your facial hair.
5. Apply some beard conditioner to immediately nourish the beard skin.
6. Hop out of the shower and towel dampen your beard.
7. Apply some beard oil to trap in moisture and replenish the lost oils.

2. Exfoliating Boar Bristle Beard Brush

Using a good beard brush is essential to any proper beard care routine.

The natural boar bristles will glide through your facial hair fibers and remove most of the dirt, beard dandruff, and dead skin cells on their way.

This provides an instant exfoliating effect, and the best part is that you can use a beard brush daily since it won’t strip the beard from its natural oils.

In fact, brushing with a stiff boar bristle brush can stimulate the sebaceous glands to produce even more sebum oil, which helps hydrate and nourish the facial hair.

How to Exfoliate the Whiskers with the Beard Brush

1. Make sure your beard is not wet or towel damp before brushing.
2. Once sure that your beard is dry, grab your trusted boar bristle brush.
3. Start from underneath the beard and brush upwards multiple times.
4. Move into the chin and cheek area and brush in every imaginable direction.
5. If you want, you may also carefully brush the mustache area.
6. Once you think you’re done, you can apply beard balm or beard oil.
7. And then finish off by brushing straight down to make your beard look natural.
8. The brush helps distribute the balm or oil you used to all hair from roots to tips.

3. In-Shower Soft Scrubber Brush

I said above that you should always make sure that you’re not using a beard brush on a wet or towel damp beard.

Why?

Simply because the natural boar’s bristles in those types of brushes are so firm that they can easily cause beard damage and even tear off some of your beard hairs if you start rubbing them against a wet facial hair.

But if you still want to brush your beard in the shower, there is one product that can help you do that without damaging the beard.

How to Exfoliate Facial Hair with the In-Shower Brush

1. Hop into the shower and completely wet your beard.
2. Lather up some beard shampoo, conditioner, or beard scrub.
3. Take out the in-shower scrubber and start scrubbing in all directions.
4. Once done, put away the scrubber and thoroughly rinse your beard.
5. Towel dampen it and apply beard oil to trap in moisture and replenish lost oils.

4. Natural Brown Sugar Scrub

If you want to pamper your beard and exfoliate it with a 100% natural and gentler alternative to the typical beard scrubs, you may want to give the brown sugar scrub a try.

The ingredients on the Brown Sugar Scrub are short and sweet, basically, just brown sugar mixed in some carrier oils (sweet almond oil, jojoba oil, apricot kernel oil), and enriched with extract and essential oils so it has some scent and skin invigorating benefits.

A 10 oz. jar of this stuff costs about $14, but you could easily make your own DIY brown sugar beard scrub by filling a jar with 2/3 of brown sugar, and the rest 1/3 with some jojoba oil and black coffee.

The idea is just to soak the sugar into a carrier oil so that you can easily scrub it against your beard skin. The sugar granules are naturally abrasive and will provide some exfoliating benefits.

How to Exfoliate the Beard with the Sugar Scrub

1. Hop into the shower and wash your beard with beard shampoo.
2. Scoop out about a nickel-sized chunk of brown sugar scrub.
3. Furiously rub it all over your beard skin in every direction.
4. After about a minute, put away the scrub and rinse your beard.
5. Apply beard conditioner, rinse the beard, towel dampen it.
6. Finish off by trapping the moisture in with beard oil.

Conclusion

So that’s how you exfoliate the facial hair in four different ways.

I would say that the original beard scrub is probably the easiest and most straight-forward method, but if you’re up to it, give the in-shower scrubber or brown sugar scrub a try.

What about the beard brush?

Well, if you have a beard, you should be brushing it daily with a brush anyway, so I hope you own one already!

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