With facial hair growing in popularity, products that help it grow on, well, our faces, are also becoming more popular. Beard growth oils are more and more frequently popping up next to regular beard oils and other beard grooming products. However, that does beg the question – “Does beard growth oil work?”
If you’ve been growing and grooming your beard for some time, you’ve like heard of or tried beard oils. They are generally accepted as quite beneficial products – they moisturize your skin and beard, they help remove any itching and skin irritations underneath your beard, and they also tend to have amazing scents, making people around you want to rub their faces on your beard. Sounds good, right?
What about “beard growth oils”, however? They are advertised to actually help your beard grow faster and thicker. But do these facial hair growth oil products actually do that?
What does regular beard oil actually do for your beard?
Normal beard oils aren’t usually advertised as “beard hair growth oil” products – they are just beard oils. Some brands might mention that they help you grow your beard and that much is true – they help make the whole process easier and more enjoyable, they help treat or remove some of the more unpleasant problems that can befall you while you’re growing your beard, and so on. But beard oils won’t make the hair itself grow at a faster rate and they do not magically create more hair follicles on your skin.
Most normal beard oils include things such as Argan oil, Jojoba oil, Grapeseed oil, and other similar oils. All of them are quite effective at moisturizing your skin and hair, making them softer, smoother, and healthier in the process. In doing so, beard oils also help prevent and treat things such as beard dandruff and other skin irritations that can come out of having dry skin.
So, does beard oil work? Yes, it does. It helps you grow your beard in a more pleasant and effective manner, and it helps you deal with certain problems that can impede or slow down your beard growth. However, there is a difference between “speeding up beard growth” and “preventing beard growth from being slowed down”.
What is the difference between beard oils and beard growth oils?
Now that we know what beard oils are, the question becomes “What are beard growth oils?” These are oils that are actually advertised as “helping your beard grow faster”. Is that really the case, though? What magical ingredients can beard growth oils have that allow them to actually help your beard grow faster? Or is it just a marketing trick?
Well, there are plenty of natural ingredients a beard oil might have that will indeed quicken the growth of hair on our bodies, whether facial hair or otherwise. We’ll list most of the more beneficial ingredients below, but our main problem with “beard growth oils” is that most of them don’t actually have such ingredients. When you look at their ingredients lists, a lot of these beard growth oils have pretty much the exact same ingredients as normal beard oils which leads to the conclusion that they are just advertised as beard growth oils.
Additionally, there’s also the question of definitions – if a beard oil can help prevent dry skin, irritations, dandruff, and other such problems that tend to slow down beard growth, then that oil is actually helping your beard grow faster, right? So, we can’t really fault companies for advertising their products this way. But it does need to be pointed out that if a beard oil doesn’t include anything that actually quickens hair growth and just includes the standard argan and jojoba oils together with some scented essential oils – it’s just normal beard oil.
What are the beard oil ingredients that can stimulate beard growth?
So, what ingredients should a beard growth oil have to actually be able to help your beard grow faster in standard, problem-free situations? Here’s a quick list of what you should be looking for:
- Biotin
- Vitamins A, B (B6, in particular), C, D, and E
- Zinc
- Fish oil
- Castor oil
- Aloe Vera
How to apply beard oil?
You may be wondering how often to use beard oil or how much beard oil to use. Both of those questions should usually be answered by the manufacturer themselves on the beard oil, but the general rule of thumb is that you should 3-4 drops for a newly grown beard and 5-6 or even up to 10 and more drops for a longer and older beard.
As for how often, that depends on where you live and on how long your beard is. If you live in a humid climate you may not need to use beard oil every day and you might be able to get away with using it only once every couple of days. In drier climates, however, you may need to use beard oil more than once per day. Similarly, if you have a short beard you won’t need to use beard oils too often. For long and bushy beards, however, a more frequent beard oil use is recommended.
In conclusion
The short of it is that beard oils are indeed quite helpful for beard growth – they help clean and moisturize your skin and hairs, they prevent many of the problems that would otherwise stunt your beard hair growth, and they make the whole process much more enjoyable. All of those things can be said to help you grow your beard “faster”. However, most beard oils or beard growth oils on the market don’t actually have the necessary ingredients to speed up hair growth.
So, always look at the ingredients list of whatever oil or other product you’re buying, and always consider what exactly it’s going to help you with. IF you have dry or sensitive skin, beard oils can indeed help you grow your beard better, thicker, smoother, and faster. Just don’t expect any miracles out of them.
