How can I make my beard kissable? Ten simple ways

Whether you are single, in a relationship, or married, growing a beard can put off many potential partners and cause your partner to kiss you less. If you are lucky, your beard may encourage more kissing. A focus group found that 9% of partners preferred their man with a beard. Perhaps your partner falls into the 9%. In the same bit of research, it was shown that 37% prefer a clean-shaven face.

You can make your beard more kissable by keeping it soft, clean, trimming away from your lips, using nice smelling products that complement each other, keeping the sharp ends of the beard dull and communicating with your partner on their preference of style and smell.

Even though focus groups found that people preferred clean-shaven faces, the peer-reviewed literature says the opposite.

Some research published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, entitled “The Paradox of Manliness: Manliness of the Face and Beard Interact to Determine Women’s Assessment of Men’s Facial Attractiveness”.

Researchers said: We asked 8,500 women to assess men’s attractiveness in three categories: bearded, fully bearded, and sporting a goatee.

The results showed that full-bearded men were considered more mature, masculine, socially dominant and aggressive. The beard was also a characteristic that women consider when choosing a short-term or long-term partner.

Here are the ways you can keep your beard more kissable:

Make it soft

Depending on the length of your beard, your beard may be wiry to the touch. If it is short, the stubble is likely to be very rough due to the sharp ends of the short hairs. If your beard is long, your beard may likely be dry on the ends of the hair.

Keeping your beard soft and conditioned will certainly make it more kissable.

You can make your beard softer by locking in the moisture, using beard condition, refraining from shampooing every day, reducing the weathering effects on your beard, and experimenting with a range of beard moisturising products.

One of the best products you can use is Shea butter.

Shea butter is a fantastic product that is amazing for every part of your beard growing journey. I have been using Shea butter for as long as I have been grown a beard – even when I had stubble – and I always keep a fresh batch on hand for when I want to give my skin and beard that extra boost.

Shea butter is extracted from the nuts of the Shea tree, and in its raw form, it has an off-white colour that is solid at room temperature. All you have to do is heat up the solid in your hands until it is pliable enough to rub over the length of your beard.

Shea butter has an amazing array of properties that are completely backed up by science:

  • It can help you beat beardruff – In 2018, a study found that when used in combination with other products, it helps reduce flakes.
  • It may help hair get stronger – Similar plant-based butter has been shown to make hair much more resistant to breakages
  • It is antibacterial and antifungal – if your beard is smelling or you have some issues with a dirty beard. Shea butter will help fight off the bacteria that are in your beard. Want more about beard bacteria? Check out this article all about beard bacteria.
  • Can add slight sun protection to your beard hair – If you live in a sunny and hot environment, shea butter ats an extra layer of sun protection that has been estimated to provide a 3 – 4 SPF protection.

If I had to choose just one product to try and soften up my beard for kissing, it would be Shea butter.

Make it less prickly

There is no doubt that some beards are prickly. The first person to notice when a beard is prickly is your partner or girlfriend. The early stages of beard growth are very prickly. It is likely to be very prickly because you have recently shaved an area of your beard, and even a recent trim can end up with a prickly feel to it.

The prickliness is typically due to the hairs being short or sharp on the ends as hair grows naturally tapered to a point. By trimming and shaving the hairs, the tapered point gets replaced with a blunt and. The blunt end can feel prickly to the touch. The prickly feeling of the hair won’t last too long because weathering and exposure will soft in the ends of the hair.

Beards will also feel very prickly if they are dry. You need to replenish the moisture in your beard regularly with many techniques and products. One of the primary reasons people’s long beard hairdryers aggressively use heat treatments to straighten or blowdry their beards into a particular style or shape.

If you want to know more about how to make your beard less prickly, check out my other article – where I tell you all of the tricks for making your beard less prickly in a flash – click here to be taken to the article.

How to make your beard less prickly in a flash!

Please keep it clean

Keeping your beard clean is the number one way of keeping it kissable. Keeping your beard clean meaning free from bacteria, grime, food, or anything else that is not desirable to be near someone’s face.

The skin underneath a beard naturally produces a fair amount of sebum that can end up smelling when it builds up.

Sebum is the natural oil that gets produced by your face. It’s the body’s way of keeping the hair conditioned and soft. With a long beard, sebum builds up at the base of the hair relatively quickly. So if you don’t wash your beard deeply, i.e. get to the roots of the beard, the sebum can build up and harbour bacteria that will start to make your beard smell.

Sebum is also heavily influenced by the foods that you eat. If you eat particularly strong-smelling food, the sebum excreted by your face will quickly adopt that smell. If you find that the smell is coming deep from the base of your beard – try eating a less stinky diet for a week to see if that improves the smell.

Use a dedicated beard shampoo, so you don’t strip all of the natural oils away from your beard. Head shampoos are formulated from harsh soaps – because the head is an oily area.

Trim away from the lips

Some bearded men like the idea of having a big flowing moustache. This fancy, or handlebar, style moustache can very easily cover the entire mouth. Even though many men find this aspirational and start their beard-growing journeys with that goal, it often becomes more of a hassle than they thought and many end up trimming their moustache short.

A shorter moustache certainly makes it much easier to kiss.

If you find that the hairs from the top lip irritate you or significantly get in the way during kissing, I recommend that you trim your moustache.

The best length, in my experience, is where the hairs have been trimmed to just above or below the top lip line. This gives you plenty of access to both lips and minimises the amount of interaction with the hairs.

Trimming above the lip line also means it is impossible to get longhairs trapped between kissing lips.

The only issue that may arise is in the corners of the mouth. The corners of the mouth are typically much longer hairs because they connect the moustache to the beard. If you are kissing particularly passionately, these can easily get swept up into the mouth.

Choose nice smelling products

Making your beard more kissable involves using nice smelling products. Whether or not something smells nice is an extremely subjective topic of conversation. People adore some smells whilst the same smell can be detested by others.

Making your beard more kissable means choosing a base smell that your partner is like. Or, if you are looking to find someone new to kiss, I would recommend going with relatively neutral smells such as vanilla, peppermint, citrus. I would avoid “overly manly” smells such as whiskey, would, cedar, or other strong scents.

Avoid scent confusion

Try your best to avoid scent confusion.

When we maintain our beards, we often use a combination of products: shampoos, conditioners, leave-in conditioners (oils, balms, moose, butter), beard oil, beard salt spray, and much more.

Each one of these products has its smell. Combining them without thought can cause scent confusion.

If someone gets close to a beard with many different scents in them, they can easily become overwhelmed and put off by the combinations.

I recommend using a base sent in your preferred butter or beard balm and using unscented oils and conditioners to support your beard growing routine.

Remove sharp ends

Stubble can also be tamed by using a product to rub off the sharp ends of your hair.

There is a product called The Soft Goat, a hypoallergenic pad that dulls sharp edges from trimming and shaving when rubbed on stubble. It is the first stubble softener that doesn’t rely on the absorption of a product into the stubble.

The concept is very simple – it is quickly and easily removing the sharp ends of your hair through mechanical action. It is a small and lightly textured pad that you gently rub in a circular motion over your daily growth for about a minute or two, depending on your results.

Each pad lasts about two months and comes in a box of three – so that is six months of super soft stubble!

Keep it tame

The first thing that makes a beard kissable is the way it is styled. Keeping your beard tame means that the person who could potentially kiss you isn’t put off by your unkempt beard. Like me, this can be particularly hard if you have a thick beard, but check out my YouTube video below to discover the five insider secrets for taming your thick beard.

Learning how to use trimmers properly is a very important skill.

The important areas to focus on are the neckline, sideburns, cheek line, moustache, and the bottom line of the beard. By trimming up these areas carefully with a good set of electric trimmers, you will attract the right people to come and kiss your beard.

If you want a full rundown on how to trim your beard, check out my other article – how to trim a beard and keep your beard looking sharp – click here to be taken to this article.

It takes a little bit of practice, and if you want some advice, I recommend seeing your local trusted barber. I have been doing my beard trimming for the last three years, and I have enjoyed the process. I saved myself a lot of money and learned a new skill along the way!

If you want to know more about tame a thick beard, check out my other article – click here for all of the insider secrets.

How do you tame a thick beard

Communicate with your partner

One thing that I have learned about being in a relationship is that communication is key.

If you want your beard to be more kissable, ask your current partner what they would want your beard to become to kiss it more often. You have to make sure that you do not get offended by the responses and accept all of the suggestions gracefully.

Not reacting can be difficult if you are working hard on growing on your beard.

Nonetheless, asking your partner exactly what they find attractive in a beard and would increase the number of kisses they initiate is a surprisingly simple way of getting to the root of any problems quickly.

Confidence

Lastly, confidence makes men much sexier. And this is according to science. If you want to make your beard more kissable and get people initiating more kisses, you can simply rock your beard with confidence.

How can I make my beard kissable

A study published in 2020 investigated whether men’s social confidence in initial, opposite sex chatting contacts could be improved through a video tutorial. They measured the video results by measuring their perceived confidence socially and whether or not that resulted in making them more romantically desirable.

The scientists investigated social confidence in three experiments using a live interactive mate selection context. They predicted that women would perceive heterosexual male participants who received a speed dating tutorial as having more confidence in initial conversations. This perceived confidence would translate into perceptions that the individuals are more romantically desirable and worthy of additional contact.

They found that the video tutorial trained men felt more confident going into the chats, and female chat partners perceived them to be higher in social confidence, status, and dominance.

The great news about this is that social confidence appears to be trainable and whether or not you have a kissable beard can be influenced by your perceived social confidence. It is as easy as watching a short training video!

Summary

In this article, we have gone over all of the things you can do to make your beard more kissable. From first impressions to confidence and communication, making your beard more kissable involves keeping it well-kept and displaying confidence over your decision to have a beard.

Stay confident, sexy, and I am in no doubt that people will find your beard much more kissable!

The Author


Andy Stapleton

Andy is a writer and YouTuber with a PhD in science. He has written and/or produced videos for Science Alert, COSMOS magazine, and Australia's Science Channel among others. He is an avid beard grower and after many years of growing and trialling different beard styles, he started this blog to share the tips, tricks, and science that he has learned along the way!