Crafting the perfect beard fade from home isn't something that comes easily to most of us. In fact, the thought of messing up our hard earned growth prevents most of us Beardsmen from ever attempting to fade your own beard.

The result? Expensive barber visits to get the fade or beard style you're looking for. Now, not to bash on barbers, if you find the right one he or she can be worth way more than what they are charging you. But trust me, that $20 fades start to add up pretty quick. 

I personally went to the barber for my fades nearly every other week until I watched him enough times to have enough confidence to give it a shot myself. Now, my first beard fade from home wasn't quite as clean as the barbers, but I've perfected it over the years and learned a thing or two that I want to share with you. 

Beard Fade 101

If you're not sure what a faded beard is, the overall idea is to trim your beard hairs to different lengths, from shortest to longest from the top of your sideburn down your cheek and into your beard. You want to blend the hairs together so there are no hard lines separating the different lengths, but rather they gradually blend from short to long in a seamless transition.

The main idea when you fade a beard is that is that you don't notice any of the lines, and it just slowly kind of gets longer in length until it blends into the bulk of your beard. What this is gonna do is really clean up around the ears around the sideburns. It makes your beard look tighter and gives it a more uniform shape. 

Fading your sideburns into your beard will make a huge impact on the overall look of your beard, and in my opinion, the sideburns area has the biggest impact on whether a beard is "unkept" or "groomed" in the eyes of most people. You can have your beard seem very well put together by keeping the sideburns and upper cheek area trimmed, even with 12+ inches of beard.

Tools of The Fade

The only tool you'll need to craft the perfect faded beard at home is a good set of clippers with a set of guards. The guards are what allow you to trim the hairs down gradually and blend them together.

Depending on the length you desire, you may blend from a 0 or a 2 at the sideburns, and work your way down into a 4, 6, 8 etc. This will again vary on how tight you want the sideburn area to be.

How to Fade Your Beard

Make sure to start with the biggest guard and begin on your upper cheek, slowly working your way smaller in guard size and up towards your sideburn. This will give you a safety net so you don't take it too short and lose the ability to blend it smoothly into the longer length of your beard.

Before you actually connect the guard to your clippers, make sure to do a dry run with the guard only to really see what size you want to start with. With the guard only, you can see what hairs will be above that guard height and will ultimately be cut off. This will give you a good idea how much you will be cutting off before you commit to it. I highly recommended starting with a size bigger than you think for your first pass as you can always take more off. 

A good rule of thumb is that you really only want to fade down to a horizontal line at your top lip, up to the top of your sideburn. So choose your largest guard size first from your top lip line, and trim everything up to your sideburn. 

From there, grab the next guard size down and move up your cheek about a quarter inch or so and trim everything up to your sideburn with that shorter guard. Repeat this process as you work your way to the smallest guard towards the top of your sideburn (shortest length).

The Last Cut on Beard Fades

Learning to fade your beard from home can be difficult at first, but I can promise you it gets much easier with time. I truly hope these tips help give you the confidence to give it a shot yourself. If you have any questions or have any specific questions we can answer for you, don't hesitate to reach out to us anytime!

Live Bearded, Brother!