Kratos Beard [How to grow, trim and maintain]

I have been told on my YouTube channel, many times, that my beard resembles Kratos from the God of War game. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to share with you exactly how I shape and maintain my beard and, how you can grow a Kratos beard yourself.

Growing a Kratos beard comes down to initially possessing similar hair colour, density, cheek lines and waiting for approximately 263 days to achieve the appropriate chin length. Then, trimming up your beard so that the longest point is in the middle of your chin will give you a Kratos beard.

Kratos is the protagonist of the God of War series game which is produced by Santa Monica Studios. The character first appeared in 2005 and is based on Greek mythology. The character is betrayed as being oblivious to anything but seeking revenge on the Greek gods and is very stoic, bloodthirsty, and arrogant in nature.

His legendary beard has taken a while to get right. In a 2017 interview, the God of War director says that the beard uses some old school gameplay trickery to make it flow naturally.

They also say that the beard smells of pine and dead trolls.

Adapting a Kratos beard from a 3D model in a game to real-life takes a fair amount of effort and good base growth. The thing about the digital domain is that they can provide a really dense and dark beard at the click of a button. In real life you need to be able to emulate the correct colour, density, high cheek lines, and have enough patience to wait until the beard is able to grow to the maximum length – which, in the case of this beard, it is directly in the middle of the beard off of the chin.

Growing a Kratos beard

Growing a Kratos beard yourself relies on you having a good hair density on your face before starting. The characters beard is dark, thick, suspiciously well-maintained, and shaped to perfection.

Before you start growing your very own Kratos beard I recommend you doublecheck all of the items, below, to make sure that you are able to reach your beard growing goals.

Hair color

The Kratos beard is incredibly dark, and dense. In order to consider growing this type of beard you should already have a relatively dark base colour. Or, you can have a slightly lighter beard which you can dye using a range of different beard dye products.

To achieve the perfect result, it is very important to find the right beard color for you.

Every beard is different and so I recommend that you give it a try or three beard dyes before choosing your favorite. Other methods of application, such as pastes and creams, may also work better for you.

One of my favourite beard dyes is the grisly mountain beard dye.

This beard dye is full of organic gradients and has been specifically designed to leave your beard looking as natural as possible. There are no chemicals which could cause any sort of reaction or irritate the skin and there are no additives which you won’t recognize.

This beard dye works particularly well if you are growing a Kratos beard and you already have a darker beard than most. If you want to completely change your beard colour you should consider purchasing just for men beard and moustache dye.

Hair density

The character has got a very significant beard density.

There is a full density across the entire surface of the beard. And it has incredible density in areas where some people struggle such as the cheeks and the area where the moustache connects to the beard.

The beard is incredibly bushy towards the sides of the head which causes the beard to splay out slightly. This means that the hair growth is consistent across the entire beard and front surface of the face.

In order to pull off a full Kratos beard you need to also have a very high density across your entire face.

You can use temporary beard products to fill in the gaps. These include beer fibres, beard pens, and other beard darkening and boosting topical products.

Besides the hair density, the hair is also very straight. The density combined with the straightness of the beard hair is difficult for most people to pull off in real life. The hair doesn’t look particularly curly and, it looks as if it is much straighter than a naturally occurring beard. You can achieve this using beard straighteners or other heat treatments.

High cheek line

The lines of the Kratos beard are also very well defined. In some versions of the game the cheek line is incredibly sharp and the bottom line of the beard is also very well trimmed. This character clearly spends a lot of time maintaining their beard to perfection.

The particularly high beard line of the Kratos beard will make this beard hard for most people to achieve. If you look at a render of the character you will see that the cheek line almost starts at the top of the ear.

This is very unnatural and, if you try to emulate this in real life, your cheek line will not be able to naturally achieve this look. Typically, it starts much lower on the sideburn than the character from the game.

The cheek line is trimmed up with a straight edge pointing to the corners of the mouth. The moustache is also very thick and well maintained.

Moustache line

The moustache of the Kratos beard style is incredibly well defined and completely covers the top lip. It is trimmed with no moustache notch and has hairs that completely grow the entire depth of the moustache. By that, I mean that the hairs on the very top of the moustache completely cover the hairs underneath – growing the full length.

Growing this type of beard may take a while because of the length of the point that the chin.

Time it’ll take

The Kratos beard style can take you up to a year to grow depending on the rate of your hair growth and, how patient you are before trimming. Ultimately, the time you need to wait is determined by your starting point and how long you want to get the point at the chin – which is the longest part of the Kratos beard style.

Based on a very rough calculation, and assuming that you are starting from a clean shave it may take you up to 368 days to grow a Kratos beard:

  • 0.38 mm per day
  • Chin length = 10 – 14 cm
  • 263 – 368 days

These numbers are assuming that you want the hairs directly under your bottom lip to fully extend the full-length of the tapered point. You may be able to achieve a Kratos beard in a shorter amount of time if you’re not starting from a clean shave and, you do not want hairs at the front of your beard to stretch the full depth of the tapered point.

Trimming a Kratos beard

There are a variety of Kratos style beards that you can choose from. Ultimately you need to decide how pointy you want your beard to be, and, how long or bushy you want your beard to be.

How pointy?

Here are a variety of different Kratos style beards that you can choose from:

You’ll notice that, although similar, they all have slightly different lengths, bottom shapes, and depth of the point. Deciding exactly how to far you want your beard to emulate the on-screen character will determine exactly how you trim up the beard.

The most important thing, however, is trimming up the longest point of the beard – which is the middle part of the chin growth.

Longest point middle chin

Trimming up a Kratos beard style means tapering the beard to a point with the longest growth being directly under the middle of the chin.

Making sure that you do not use your tremors to create a flat bottom to your chin line will ensure that you are emulating the Kratos beard style perfectly. To gain some extra length you may also want to straighten the beard underneath the bottom lip so that it falls straight down and does not curl. The character has a relatively straight beard and this is most obvious under the bottom lip.

You can straighten the beard hair using beard straighteners or a hairdryer on high heat.

Trimming a point

Trimming a point into a beard means you have to make a decision on how steep you want the point to be on either side of the face.

The Kratos style beard looks relatively steep when viewed straight on. However, there is approximately a 45° angle between the chin and the longest point under the ear.

The beard is trimmed so that there is the same depth of hair along the entire cheek line.

Making sure that your point is well defined and that it forms a natural taper when viewing from the sides is a relatively tricky thing to do on your own. I recommend that you approach a barber to do this for you and, beard brand shows you how to create a Kratos style pointed beard:

 Cheek line

The cheek line for this beard is incredibly well defined in some versions of the character. The character sometimes has a little patch of hair that grows in the middle of the cheek just above the area of maximum density. However, this is very hard to see in some renders.

The cheek line of the character is incredibly well defined and it is not a very natural looking cheek line.

Most cheek lines are relatively weak and are made more defined by trimming it lower. The Kratos beard has a full dense cheek area which is equivalent to the density on other parts of the face.

This is very hard to do in real life and you may find that this is where your beard varies ever so slightly from the game render character.

Full mustache covers lip

The moustache of the Kratos beard is also very thick but not bushy. The moustache covers the complete top lip and it seems to be trimmed to the length of where the lips join when resting together.

This is a very similar place to where I grow my moustache and, you can check out my YouTube video, below, where I answer the question whether or not your beard should cover your top lip completely.

growing out the top hairs of the moustache until they completely cover the hairs underneath will be the number one thing to make this beard style look more authentic. Also, the hairs are slightly longer as you approach the sides of the moustache this allows the moustache to blend into the beard seamlessly and naturally.

Clean neckline

From the side, the Kratos beard looks as if it is cleanly shaven. Because the beard isn’t particularly bushy I would suspect that the neckline has been shaved. In my experience, having an unshaved neckline pushes out the beard significantly.

Lifting up the sides of the beard and trimming up underneath the beard to reduce the bulk of the hair underneath will allow the beard to sit flatter. You can also create this look by using beard products with more hold such as beard wax or beard balm.

Defined sideburn join

because the character is completely bald the beard starts with a defined and sharp line cut into the top of the sideburn. I often blend and fade my beard into my bald head – for a Kratos style beard you need to shave the top of the sideburn just under the top of the ear.

The first significant crease in the ear is where the beard should start.

The beard looks particularly dark and scary because of the lack of hair on top of the head. This provides maximum contrast between the skin and the beard resulting in a very thick and contrasting beard colour and shape.

Maintaining a Kratos beard

Maintaining a Kratos beard involves trimming up the lines of the moustache, beard, cheek line, and neckline regularly. It also looks as if the beard lacks any flyaways and is very cohesive in structure. This means that it is likely to use a lot of beard balm, wax, or other product for control. Lastly, the beard looks very well conditioned and certainly does not look dry.

Here are all of the things you can do to maintain your Kratos beard once you have grown it and trended into the appropriate taper and point.

Trim up every two weeks

Maintaining a duck tail style beard means that you need to trim up at least every two weeks. Trimming up your beard every two weeks will give you enough time to relax and enjoy your beard but will remove the fuzzy ends and keep it as well defined as the beard in the game.

Every two weeks I highly recommend that you focus on:

  • cheek line – keep the cheek line straight as possible and avoid dipping into the beard.
  • bottom line – the bottom line of the beard needs to be very well kept. It should have a slight fuzziness to the edge but it should sweep down maintaining the depth of the beard all the way to the long taper at the front. Make sure that your beard is as symmetrical as possible on either side of your face.
  • moustache line – the moustache line of this beard is very well defined. You need to sweep across the bottom line of the moustache making sure that it covers the top lip completely.
  • removing thickness so that it falls straight down – removing some of the thickness underneath the beard from the neckline will mean that it doesn’t puff out at the sides as much as a full beard.

If you want to know how I trim up my long beard I have shown the full process in my YouTube video, below. It is very similar to the Kratos style beard and you can use it for structuring your fortnightly trims.

Use beard balm/wax for flyaways

The characters beard also seems like it has very little fuzziness or flyaway hairs. The only way to achieve this in real life is to trim up all of the problem areas and use a good quality beard balm or wax to hold the beard in place.

Oil and conditioner

Lastly, the beard looks very well-conditioned. I highly recommend that you use a beard or oil, or a beard conditioner, when you are washing and drying your beard. A well conditioned beard is much easier to trim and keep in shape and, this character looks as if they know all the secrets for making their beard look as awesome as possible.

If you want to know more about the best condition as you can use for your beard check at my other article – click here.

best beard conditioners

Summary

In this article, we have gone over everything you need to know about growing, trimming, and maintaining a Kratos style beard. This Kratos beard is hard to replicate exactly in real life.

That is because the cheek line of the beard is incredibly high and lacks the natural dip which accompanies most beards.

Also, the beard is very well maintained and the bottom lines of the beard are trimmed up to perfection. This means that you will need to trim up your beard every fortnight to replicate and maintain this beard in real life.

If your beard is particularly light you mean need to die the beard in order to achieve the same look and, shaving your head will also help increase the contrast of the beard with your skin.

Good luck with growing your Kratos beard and I look forward to seeing your cosplay!

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!