The 29 Best Beard Styles For Men to Flex Right Now

EVERY BEARD is unique—some grow long and dark while others are shorter and full. Regardless of your beard length or type, every beard needs special care. The right beard products can actually promote regular growth and potentially even help to fill in some of those patchy areas. With enough care, attention, and time, you can grow the beard of your dreams. And the best thing about growing a beard is that you don't have to stick with one particular style. Just like the hair on top of your head, the style of your beard can be customized to help accentuate and flatter your best features.

Like the right haircut, the right beard shape can completely change your overall look. It’s the reason why many guys grow beards in the first place. If you have a round face, an angular beard add length and can give your face a slimmer appearance. For long, oval-shaped faces, a wide beard provides much-needed balance. Sharp angles can give a soft jawline some edge and where you draw your cheek line can make cheekbones look more defined.

The best beard style for your face largely depends on your unique face shape and hair type. If you're new to the beard life, it may take some trial and error to find the right shape for you, but trust that there's a beard shape out there for every man. You don't have to go it alone, either. A barber is a good resource for advice on what will look best for your face shape, but before you ask them for their advice, it won't hurt to do you own research and get a feel for the different types of beards that are out there. Below, we've rounded up our favorite beard styles alongside the tools and tips you need to cop the look.

Read more: How to Grow a Beard

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Long Beard

James Harden

This classic beard shape is all about controlled length and helps make a face look longer. It depends on letting your whiskers grow, and resisting the urge to trim them too early, because it’s much easier to shape it once you have length and volume than while it’s in progress. Once you have enough length, trim down the sides so they’re in line with the sides of your face and keep the longest part directly in line with your chin.

Beard trimmer: King C. Gillette Beard Trimmer

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Short Beard

Frank Ocean

What this beard doesn’t have in length, it makes up for in fullness. It’s ideal for guys with round or oval faces who are looking for a definition and to accentuate their cheekbones. Even with a short beard, you need to grow it for a few months to get enough length on the facial hair before trimming it down. Use the longest length on your beard trimmer to keep it a consistent length around your entire jawline, and then gradually trim shorter 'til you get it to the length you want.

Beard trimmer: Panasonic Precision Power Beard, Mustache & Hair Trimmer

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Egg-Shaped Beard

Oscar Isaac

A soft, rounded beard can help square faces look longer and leaner by visually elongating your chin. First grow out enough length on the whole beard that you can gradually whittle down the sides while keeping the length on your chin. Then, instead of trimming at sharp angles, gently round the corners so it looks like an oval. The softer shape will help soften harder features and make a wide jaw look slimmer.

Beard trimmer: Panasonic Precision Power Beard, Mustache & Hair Trimmer

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Goatee

Common

Think of a goatee as a small beard style. It has all the variants of a full-face beard, but just on a smaller scale. Once you have even slight length to your facial hair, cutting in a goatee is the easy part: just shave everything except for your mustache, chin, and the lines connecting the two. Keep the lines defined with daily trimming or shaving, but keeping a little more length to the hair on your chin will help visually lengthen any face shape.

Beard trimmer: Andis 32400 Slimline Pro T-Blade Trimmer

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Black Tie Scruff

David Beckham

This style has more in common with the short beard than your traditional scruff, because even though it’s short enough to show skin, it’s still trimmed and maintained. It requires more length than just a day or two of not shaving (more like four or five depending on how fast your hair grows) and a heavy hand with the trimmer. Keep the length short enough to see skin through the whiskers but uniform the whole way around and the cheek and neck lines crisp.

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Beard With Bald

Common

When you have a bald or shaved head, whether by choice or not, a beard can help create contrast and definition—plus, it just looks damn good. Most beards look good with a bald head, but we recommend keeping it trimmed and crisp, to help create further definition in your features. Go for a short or mid-length, like this, and maintain the crips lines with daily shaving.

Read more: Best Beard Styles for Bald Men

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Square Beard

Jamie Dornan

A square beard is the converse to an egg beard (where there is more length on the chin); this medium beard style keeps more length on the sides to widen the face and make the jawline look more angular. It’s ideal for guys with longer, more oval face shapes since it helps create angles that they don't naturally have. Grow whiskers long enough to create length on the sides, then trim closer to the chin while leaving more length around the corners of the jaw.

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Pointy Beard

Jared Leto

Leaving more length on your chin will always make any face shape look longer. To create a point beard, keep the angles crisp (not rounded like with an egg) and instead of squaring it off at the chin, trim it into a point. Think of a diagonal line moving from the corner of each jaw and meeting right below your chin. It’s a more aggressive look than the gentle egg shape, but will make any face look longer and leaner.

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Baby’s First Beard

Zac Efron

This is as much a vibe as it is a style: embracing the inconsistencies of grow out. For many guys, especially if they’ve never grown a beard before, getting past the initial months of growing out whiskers is difficult (itchy! uncomfortable! scraggly!), but it’s all part of the process. When growing a beard, lean into it and embrace what it looks like before it gets long enough to style into something else. Resist the urge to trim or shave until you have enough length to really see what you’re working with.

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Patchy Beard

Keanu Reeves

When it comes to facial hair, the biggest complaint most guys have is patchiness—where parts of your facial hair seem to grow differently, or more, than others. It’s something that prevents many guys from growing beards in the first place for fear of it looking weird. But letting your beard do its thing is a style in itself. Men like Keanu Reeves don’t let a little patches stop them and they grow their whiskers long enough to help camouflage bigger patches, but not cover them up completely.

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Viking Beard

Jason Momoa

The viking beard is king among rugged, manly beard styles because of its devil-may-care attitude. It’s long, flowing, and decidedly un-shaped; this is not a beard that requires daily, or even weekly trimmings, and don’t even think about using a beard trimmer. The style depends on it looking a little wild. Once you have enough length (like a couple of inches), use scissors to trim errant hairs but avoid a trimmer which will give a more uniform look.

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Chinstrap Beard

LeBron James

Whether a shorter, more typical chinstrap or a longer version like on LeBron here, this style helps to emphasize a strong jawline or make a rounder raw look more defined. It requires more maintenance than some other beard styles—keeping most of the face whisker free takes almost daily shaving—and don’t forget to keep your neck line in check, too. Keep all hair growth to right on the jaw and under the chin to keep the visual effect.

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Well-Groomed Beard

John Krasinski

When you have a shorter beard, you have two choices: keep it slick and groomed or let it go a little shaggy. The choice is up to you, but to really add definition to your face and accentuate your bone structure, especially if you have a softer face, keeping a bead short and defined may be a good idea. Keeping the lines crisp and the entire length uniform will help define your jaw and draw attention to your cheekbones.

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Defined Beard

Drake

Like it’s cousin the groomed beard, a defined beard depends on two things: keeping the length short and the lines razor sharp. It’s helpful if your beard is long enough to look full, but short enough that errant hairs don’t hang over the lines you create with your razor. Make sure the keep the beard itself one uniform length and then define every line—the cheeks, the neck and the mustache—regularly to make sure there isn’t an out of place hair in sight.

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Long Goatee

Jeff Bridges

You know how to grow a goatee (scroll back up if you don’t). A long goatee depends on the same principles—keeping the cheeks and jaw shaved and the lines defined. The difference here is the length. When hair gets longer, it may require more upkeep to keep the lines defined, but leaving length on both the mustache and chin can create a much different look (and it's a great beard style for older men, too).

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The DGAF Beard

David Letterman

The key to this look, and it’s close cousin the Quarantine Beard, is keeping your hands off of it and the tools unplugged. This style says “I’m growing a beard and I don’t care what anyone thinks.” The good news is that it’s maintenance free—put down the tools and let it grow as long as you possibly can. You may eventually want to trim it into more of a defined shape, but the golden rule here is to let it shine with minimal intervention.

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Full Chin Beard

Hugh Jackman

Remember how we said length on the chin will always make a face look longer? This style is no exception and virtually ensures that happens. Instead of grooming your beard into a sharp point at the tip or rounding the corners into an egg, let all the hair that covers your chin grow long. Keep the rest of your whiskers a fairly uniform length and slightly blend if you want, but you want a bulbous shape that extends the full width of your chin.

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Three-Day Scruff

Joe Manganiello

Think of this as the short brother of the DGAF beard—it should literally look like you haven’t shaved for three or four days. The key to differentiating this from perma-stubble or black-tie scruff is that it’s less maintained. With this look, it’s okay if you have some errant hairs or if the lines are less defined. It’s casual and a little wild, like you just got back from a camping trip, and doesn’t look like you did anything at all.

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Van Dyke Beard

Pierce Brosnan

The Van Dyke is an advanced beard, and one that demands attention from others and yourself. It takes upkeep to keep your cheeks and jaw impeccably shaved in order to let the mustache and goatee shine. Grow the mustache long enough that you can curl the sides slightly and keep the goatee trimmed with scissors (and use beard balm to shape it into a point).

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Van Dyke (Abridged)

Christian Bale

If you like the look of the Van Dyke, but are thinking “Hmm, I want something a bit more Shakespearean,” allow us to introduce the Van Dyke (Abridged). It has all the hallmarks of a classic Van Dyke—mustache and pointed chin whiskers—but in this case allows facial hair to creep up toward the cheeks (but not the whole way) to cover a bit more ground. Getting the look follows the same steps as a VD, but just avoid trimming as close around your chin.

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Playoff Beard

Julian Edelman

The Playoff Beard is a marker of time—as in, allowing your facial hair to become a calendar. It’s by far the easiest beard to trim because it requires absolutely no trimming whatsoever. In fact, trimming a Playoff Beard is expressly forbidden. Getting this beard requires putting your razor, shaving cream, beard trimmer, and any other shaving accoutrements in a drawer and locking it. Instead, let your beard go wild! You should still wash and brush it though.

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Mustache-Forward Beard

Henry Cavill

Maybe you’ve always been curious about having a mustache, but feel way more comfortable with a full beard? That’s cool—this beard style is the best of both worlds. It starts like any other beard—allowing your whiskers enough time to grow until they're long enough to trim. Then, start trimming your beard to the length you desire, but do not under any circumstances touch the mustache. The goal is for the mustache to be longer, and visually more distinct, than the beard itself.

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The Wolverine

Hugh Jackman

This advanced style, modern cousin to the Mutton Chop, is admittedly hard to pull off unless you are, in fact, Wolverine. But think of it as the inverse of the Goatee. As your facial hair grows (or after it’s become long enough to trim), only shave around your mouth and chin and let everything else go to town. Your cheeks and jawline should be covered, but only to the corners of your mouth. And don’t forget to shave down that mustache.

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The Chin Cup

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Diddy

Think of this as a patch of facial hair gently caressing your chin—basically a goatee without the mustache part. It’s a bold look, but like any facial hair on your chin serves to help elongate your face and define your chin, especially if you think it could use a sharper angle. It doesn’t even need to be very long (in fact, we recommend against growing a chin cup long), but the effect is real.

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The Fade

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Chadwick Boseman

Like the fade on top of your head, the beard fade is characterized by the gradual decrease in length leading up to your ears. Depending on where you start the fade, close to your ears or down closer to your jaw, it can create an even sharper line that slims the face and draw attention to your jawline and chin. Fading your beard yourself takes a bit more effort than your average shaping, but it’s worth it for the angles and lines it can create.

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The Artist

Johnny Depp

The artist is basically a mustache paired with a Chin Cup, maybe with a soul patch thrown in for good measure, that is one of the most minimal beards you can get. Keep the hair on our chin at a minimum and the mustache thin but defined to get this look—and to let everyone know you frequent museums in your free time.

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Wild and Free

Chris Stapleton

You don't know if you can grow an impressive beard like Chris Stapleton unless you try, and if you're gonna try, you've gotta just go for it. Lose the scissors entirely. No trimming unless you've some really rogue hairs that can't be tamed. In a few month's time, you might just end up with a gloriously long beard just like Stapleton himself.

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The Polished Look

John Legend

Having a full beard doesn't necessarily mean it has to look scruffy and untidy. Legend' beard is trimmed to perfection, giving him an overall polished appearance. A good beard oil can help condition coarse hair and keep sparse strays in place. Plus, it helps to to hydrate the skin underneath, banishing any dry flakes and adding a healthy dose of moisture, leaving skin feeling smoother and softer.

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Salt and Pepper

Idris Elba

A salt and pepper beard is the ultimate flex. It's a masculine and powerful statement that says you're not putting up with any bullshit. No matter your age, a salt and pepper beard gives you that distinguished gentlemanly look that instantly demands respect. Keep it short and trimmed like Elba here for a classic and timeless appearance.