You know the feeling.

You’ve just been to the barber. He’s tidied the beard up, sorted the neckline, sharpened the cheeks and taken off exactly what you asked him to.

You look in the mirror.

Hmm.

There’s nothing actually wrong with it. The shape is right. It’s neat. It’s tidy. But somehow it just doesn’t look quite as good as you expected.

Then two or three days later, you catch yourself in the mirror again.

There we go. That’s better.

So what changed?

It’s almost

too

tidy when it’s first done

Straight after a beard trim, everything is at its most precise.

The edges are freshly cut, stray hairs have disappeared and the barber has usually brushed, combed and possibly added oil, balm or another product to finish it off.

It can make your beard look a little too perfect — almost like it hasn’t quite settled back onto your face yet.

Give it a day or two and normal life takes over.

The hairs start sitting in their natural direction again. Any product from the barber has been washed out. Your own routine takes over, and a tiny amount of new growth starts softening those freshly cut lines.

You haven’t suddenly grown a better beard in 48 hours.

It’s just stopped looking freshly trimmed.

A little bit of growth can actually help

This is probably the biggest part of it.

Those incredibly sharp cheek and neck lines soften slightly as the first bit of stubble comes through. Any tiny differences in length become less noticeable and the whole beard starts blending together again.

Basically, the barber has created the shape.

A couple of days of growth makes it look like your beard again.

And apparently, that can be the sweet spot.

Fresh enough to look tidy.

Grown in enough not to look like somebody has just attacked your face with a ruler.

So if you leave the barber thinking your beard looked better before you went in, maybe don’t panic.

Give it a couple of days.

There’s a fair chance you’ll walk past the same mirror 48 hours later, have another look and think:

Yeah. He knew what he was doing after all.

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