Does brushing your beard help it grow? It’s a popular question and the answer isn’t crystal clear because it’s both yes and no. Brushing your beard can assist your beard growth and help you to get a fuller healthier beard.

The downside is that brushing to often can have the opposite effect. When you over brush you can cause damage to your beard and delay your growth. That’s why you see a lot of different answers to this question across the internet.

I’m going to teach you how to brush your beard the right way so that you’ll do nothing but benefit from brushing. The key is to not turn brushing your beard into a habit and brush your beard for no reason other than to brush it.

Should You Brush Your Beard?

Yes, you most certainly should brush your beard. The act of brushing your beard comes with a lot of benefits. Brushing helps remove dead skin cells from the skin, particles from your beard, and it separates and straightens your beard hairs.

The best times to brush your beard is when you’re applying beard oil. Brushing helps put beard oil in all the right places. It pushes the beard oil deeper into your beard and is a way to make sure it reaches the skin underneath.

It’s vital important to keep the skin under your beard moisturized. Using a beard oil rich in vitamin E or that uses argan oil is an ingredient are great options to make sure your skin and beard stay healthy.

One of my favorite beard oils is the Gentlemen’s Brand Beard Oil & Conditioner (link to Amazon).

Does Brushing Your Beard Help it Grow?

If you plan to maximize your beard growth you should use a beard brush. Only brush your beard if you’re applying beard oil and outside of that you should try to only brush your beard once or twice more.

In total that’s 3-4 times per day at the very most. When you brush your beard it shouldn’t take much time and really only takes a couple strokes through your beard. If you catch yourself over brushing try to stop immediately. It’s a habit you’ll have to break.

It’s very easy for brushing your beard to become habit forming. We’re always reaching to touch our beards because our hands like to have something to do and stay busy. Touching your beard to often and brushing to often will weaken your beard.

It strips the natural oils away from your beard and will cause decreased growth, split ends, and dry beard.

You may have seen a guy growing a beard and his beard is much shorter under his chin. This most common reason this happens is from touching the beard to much. So, to keep your beard even and growing healthy try to break the habit and avoid doing this.

How to Brush Your Beard

Here’s the best way to brush your beard:

Start From the Bottom – Your first strokes should start at your neck and brush up and out. You’re going to fluff out your beard and it’ll look crazy. Fluff your beard out all the way around and get it nice and poofy.

Side to Side – Pick one of your sideburns and start there. Brush your beard downward without brushing past your jawline. Keep brushing and and do this on both sides.

End in the Middle – Start brushing your mustache and chin downward. Cover the left and right sides of your chin and you should end with a uniform beard.

It’s a pretty easy process so don’t let someone else make it more complicated than it should be. Just remember to brush when you apply beard oil and a couple more times through the day when needed.

Beard Comb Vs Beard Brush

Should you be using a beard brush or a beard comb? If you think they do both the same thing and it doesn’t really matter you’re wrong.  A beard brush is best in combination with beard oil and helping keep a naturally healthy beard. Beard combs are better for styling your beard (source).

Beard Combs – Combs have teeth on them and they’ll have different widths between the teeth. You can find them in plastic or wood. If you’re serious about your beard you’ll get a wooden beard comb that’s high quality.

The cheaper plastic beard combs will have small dips on each tooth that’ll get worse the more you use the comb. These dips will strip your hair and cause small cuts. Ultimately resulting in damaged hair and split ends.

A high quality wooden comb doesn’t have these dips inside the teeth. Instead you’ll find smooth edging and these combs last a long time without breaking down.

Beard Brush – Brushes have bristles made of different animal hairs or some are synthetic. There are many hairs on the brush and each one can move independently of the others. This is what makes it good for moving your beard hairs apart and spreading beard oil around.

You might want to eventually get a beard comb and beard brush. They’ll have different outcomes on how they make your beard look. So, you may end up preferring the end style result of one over the other.

The Fastest Way to Grow a Full Beard

I’ve found that the absolute fastest way to grow a beard is a mixture of a couple things. If you want to just get the biggest beard you possible can within the least amount of time you can follow these steps. However, I do recommend certain products so It’s recommended you consult your doctor first before using any product.

Tip 1) Just let it grow. Never trim it no matter what. Yes, you’re going to go through a hobo looking phase and your beard will look un-managed but it’s the price we pay to grow a quick beard.

Tip 2) Start using beard oil right from the beginning. Apply beard oil after you take a shower and a little before you go to bed or wake up in the morning (opposite your shower).

Tip 3) Start taking beard supplements day one. We’ve written a post that covers the best beard supplements and you need to start taking them day one. If you’ve had trouble growing a beard in the past then I would consider this a necessary step.

Tip 4) After one month begin applying minoxidil. You should be able to see your weak spots after one month. You’re going to use minoxidil to fill in this weak spots of your beard. Minoxidil is a type of beard Rogaine and it will expedite your beard growth in your weak areas.

I’ve found the combination above to be a killer combination for beard growth. Friends of mine have done it this exact way and had great results. Just make sure you’re comfortable and certain taking supplements is OK for you. Always consult your doctor first.