Let’s cut to the chase. Your beard won’t fall off if you never treat it with beard oil, but we can certainly vouch for the benefits gained from conditioning it with a top-quality oil. Not only will your beard love you for it, but it’ll smell fantastic, too. What’s not to like?
To find the best beard oils, we called in a veritable symphony of brands and blends and spent frankly way too long arguing over which fragrances and compounds are best. In the end, we settled for this exceptional quintet of aromas from five leading UK beard oil suppliers.
We’re fully aware that fragrance is a very subjective matter – one person’s perfect scent is another’s wretch-inducing pong – but we’re pretty confident you’ll agree that all five of these magnificent oils not only smell extremely pleasant but do a damn fine job of keeping a beard – and the skin beneath – in tip-top condition.
How to choose the best beard oil for you
What does beard oil do?
Beard oil is one of those modern trendy things that isn’t exactly essential to your wellbeing but might certainly help. There’s very good evidence that it softens and smoothes coarse bristles while conditioning the skin beneath. Beard oil essentially nourishes and reinvigorates a tired beard, making it look more presentable while infusing it with a subtle, compelling aroma that, in most instances, is much more natural smelling than your average cologne.
What sort of ingredients does beard oil contain?
Most beard oils contain a range of carrier oils that provide both nourishment and a means to deliver the fragrant essential oils that help condition the beard and facial skin. Typical carrier oils include jojoba, Moroccan argan, grapeseed, coconut and almond; most oil manufacturers include these oils in their blends. When it comes to fragrant essential oils, the sky’s the limit. However, eucalyptus, pine needle, tea tree and sandalwood are never far away.
How and when to apply beard oil
Most manufacturers suggest three or four drops in the palm of your hand followed by a vigorous rubbing together before massaging the oil deep into the whiskers so it reaches the skin beneath. Naturally, the longer your beard, the more oil it’ll require but even an overdose won’t cause any harm (though you might smell a bit rich).
The best time to apply beard oil is after a shower or a warm face wash. Simply tamp the beard with a towel until it’s bone dry then apply the oil as recommended. Now grab your comb or beard brush and gently shape it so it looks as dapper as the most dapper thing in dapperland.
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The best beard oils you can buy
Braw Beard Oils: Grand Eckson 1918
Price:£24 | Buy now from Amazon
For those unfamiliar with the Scottish saying ‘It’s a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht the nicht’, the word ‘braw’ means ‘splendid’, ‘fine’, ‘excellent’, etc. Given Scotland’s penchant for braw beards, it seems only right to include this East Lothian company which has been producing beard oils since 2012; well before beard oils became such a trend.
Braw Beard oils come in 50ml and 10ml glass bottles replete with striking bearded bloke logo and a top that deposits the oil one drip at a time. Aside from the usual argan and jojoba oils, the company also uses infuses its concoctions with hempseed oil from the cannabis sativa seed and you can really detect it in its Jarls Northman 1263 blend (let’s hope the sniffer dogs don’t).
For our money, though, the Grand Eckson 1918 blend has the most attractive aroma. with light hints of ginger and patchouli along with a gentle underlying trace of cannabis sativa. As an alternative, you might also wish to sample its Arctic Explorer 1918 blend which has a fresh peppermint fragrance and, bizarrely, a very faint trace of, er, used car oil – but in a good way.
Grand Eckson 1918 is described as a ‘heavier weight oil, better used for a fuller look’ and we’re inclined to agree; we were very impressed by both its conditioning properties and its lingering scent, which is both subtle and complimentary.
Audacious Beard Company: Wood Chopper
Price:£5.65 to £12.83 | Buy now from Amazon
This master blend is packaged in 10ml and 30ml bottles with integral glass pipettes. However, because the neck is open – most others use a dripper cap – it’s very easy to spill. Nevertheless, this small quibble is more than compensated for by the bodacious fragrance of its Wood Chopper blend, with its fine fusion of grapeseed, patchouli, bergamot, juniper berry and pine needle. One of our testers even suggested it smelled a little like a cross between a vintage guitar and shoe polish; good-quality shoe polish, it must be said.
Slap this solution on the growth around your kisser and it’ll soften and condition even the scraggiest of bristles. Other Audacious fragrances worth trying include the pine-like Woodsman and tangerine-ish Buccaneer.
Ricki Hall’s Booze & Baccy Beard Oil
Price:£13 to £34 | Buy now from Amazon
If you’d like your beard infused with a complex fragrance, then step right this way: this one’s got more notes than Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee.’ Think fresh tobacco leaves, woody oak moss, vanilla bean, fresh hops, orange, aromatic frankincense, sweet bog myrtle and spice from the bay rum tree.
Its subtle aroma is fresh and zingy and, for those old enough, reminiscent of a vintage barbershop. But rub this marvellous mixture into your mutton chops and your bristles will start to sing. Booze & Baccy comes in an attractive 50ml amber glass bottle replete with a glass pipette. Just be sure to not knock it over, mind, or you’ll have one hell of an oil spill on your hands.
Shakesbeard: Cymbe Lime
Price:£9 to £22 | Buy now from Shakesbeard
Top marks to Shakesbeard for the humorous play on words – something the Covent Garden-based company sticks to in the descriptions of all its blends. Having waded through 16 different samples, we alighted on three frontrunners: Hamlet and Return of the Mac from the Ultra Premium collection and Cymbe Lime from the Premium range. Our winner is Cymbe Lime; an oil reminiscent of Jo Malone’s Lime, Basil & Mandarin perfume, only far less effeminate. However, don’t rule out the subtle fruitiness of Hamlet or the similarly agreeable Return of the Mac.
To be honest, the other Shakesbeard scents were a bit hit and miss – To Beard or Not to Beard has hints of the sea and suntan lotion, while Julius Seize Her smells like a packet of Skittles. Still, as we’ve said before, fragrance is a very subjective matter.
Shakesbeard creates all its beard oils from a blend of argan, jojoba, coconut, almond, grapeseed, avocado and apricot, and each one is available in three different-sized glass bottles: 10, 30 and 90ml. A few drops of Cymbe Lime on our test beard left it exceedingly soft and manageable. If you’re looking for a brand with the widest range of fragrances, stop right here.
Oil Can Grooming: Iron Horse
Price:£24 | Buy now from Oil Can Grooming
Of the 25 different fragrances we tested, Oil Can Grooming’s Iron Horse came out the clear winner. Described on the can as leather and raspberry, this is a fabulously subtle, long-lasting and exceedingly attractive scent that doesn’t smell remotely fake. Indeed, its fragrance is much more leathery than it is raspberry, yet it’s also reminiscent of the natural scent the skin on your arms produces when exposed to very hot sunshine. Well, kind of.
As with the majority of beard oils, ingredients used include the obligatory argan and jojoba oils plus a little grapeseed and coconut for good measure. We found that the manufacturer’s recommended three to four drops was perfectly sufficient to treat a short- to medium-length beard, leaving it wonderfully soft and subtly fragrant.
Special mention must also go to the pleasingly fruity scent of Angel’s Share and the equally agreeable tobacco-cum-coconut combination, Blue Collar. But for most of us involved in the test, Iron Horse was far and away the most attractive fragrance in this whole line-up. So good, in fact, that even people you don’t know may be drawn over to you for a quick sniff. Iron Horse comes in a 50ml motor oil-style can that won’t break if dropped.