Guys with curly, easily tangled facial hair can find beard styling to be a nightmare. When trimming, conditioning, and moisturizing fails to tame a wild beard, it might be tempting to perm your facial hair. But will perming hurt your beard?
Any time you apply intense heat and abrasive chemicals to your beard, you run the risk of damaging the hair and underlying skin. So, while perming might solve some beard care issues, it will create others. You will need to be especially diligent in conditioning and moisturizing going forward.
Read further for a breakdown of the pros and cons of beard perming. You will also learn how to care for a permed beard and some good alternatives to the beard perm.
Why Men Perm Their Beards
Every man is different, and the same is true of every man’s facial hair. There are a lot of factors that determine how manageable a guy’s beard is: age, climate, lifestyle, ethnicity. Some of these variables are within your capacity to change. Others are just baked into your DNA.
So, while it would be great if every beardsman could wake up in the morning, rinse the old soup strainer, give it a quick brush, and be on his way, that’s not going to happen. Many beards are too thick, too thatchy, and too unyielding to be tamed with brush and comb. Beard balms, oils, and styling creams are also of no use.
For guys dealing with an unruly mass of curls, it can be tempting to reach for the perm kit or make an appointment with a stylist.
How to Perm a Beard
A beard perm is not too different from the perm people get for the top of their head. It involves chemicals that relax springy hair follicles. These products are coated and/or combed through the beard and left in. They tend to heat up as they do their work, so you need to be extra careful to avoid skin burns.
Sometimes this process also involves high-heat brushes or straighteners. Again – and this probably goes without saying – anyone undergoing a beard perm should be careful when placing hot implements close to his face.
In short, the perming process is fairly involved and invasive. This is why it’s normally the last resort for beardsmen.
Pros and Cons of Perming
As laborious as a beard perm can be, it nonetheless offers significant relief from wild facial hair. Permed beards are markedly easier to shape, style, and brush out. This will provide excellent time savings. It might also save you money in the long run, since you won’t need to use nearly as much product to control your facial hair.
However, there are still lots of cons where perming is concerned:
- You risk burning your face in the process.
- The chemicals and heat involved can lead to dry hair.
- Perming increases the likelihood of beard-hair breakage.
- It isn’t actually permanent. With each wash, the hair begins to return to its natural state. Eventually, you’ll need another perm.
- Each successive perm compounds the potential damage to your beard hair.
You need to weigh these pros and cons when deciding if you want to go with a full beard perm.
Dealing with Perm-Related Damage
If you find that your facial hair has become brittle and is breaking after a perm, you will need to take immediate action. To begin, you should make regular use of beard conditioner, beard balms, and beard oils. These will moisturize your arid follicles and rejuvenate your skin.
Additionally, you should undertake a protein-focused beard care regimen. This means eating plenty of fish, eggs, and nuts to boost the protein in your bloodstream. Additionally, you can salve your ailing beard with a protein-infusing cream or balm.
These actions will encourage quicker, healthier growth to fill in the brittle follicles you lost after your perm. Of course, this new growth will have the same tangled, kinky qualities that troubled you before you got the perm.
Caring for a Permed Beard
Even if you don’t experience full-on breakage after a perm, your facial hair will be dried out and damaged. That’s just the nature of the beast.
Luckily, there are countless products on the market – many you probably already own – that can soothe a permed beard. The most important items to care for permed facial hair are high-quality hydrating shampoos and conditioners. These should be beard-specific products, and you should use them more often to replace moisture and nutrients in fried follicles.
To a certain extent, you will be replacing some of the time you spent trying to tame your beard with time spent attending to its moisture health. The beard products needed for permed facial hair are less focused on styling and more focused on repair.
Think about investing in some super-hydrating oils and balms with healing agents like eucalyptus, mint, and tea tree oil. Also, consider investing in a good brush to work these products through your beard all the way down to the skin.
In short, whenever you perm your beard, you are robbing it of nutrients and drying it out. You need to replace that nourishment with products and dedicated beard care.
Alternatives to Beard Perming
If the risks associated with beard perming seem too steep, that’s probably because it is a significant, high-impact procedure. For guys looking for alternatives to tame their unruly beards, consider the following alternatives.
| Option | Pros | Cons |
| Using an At-Home Beard Relaxer. | ● These products are effective at detangling.
● They generally contain moisturizing agents. |
● The straightening agents in these products will deplete your hair.
● They can cause dryness issues like dandruff. |
| Curling your Beard at Home with A Curling Iron. | ● It’s a natural process, with no chemicals.
● It’s inexpensive. |
● This is a short-lived solution. Your beard will return to its normal state quickly.
● Manual beard curling is time-consuming work. |
| Go with a Shorter Beard. | ● You will save time and money, reducing your styling and straightening workload.
● Shorter beards have a clean, put-together look. |
● This requires you to make a more extreme choice about your facial appearance.
● You need to be more fastidious in trimming and shaping a short beard. |
The Bottom Line
For beardsmen with unforgiving, tangled-up facial hair, a perm might seem like the path of least resistance. While it might reduce your styling and detangling work, getting a perm can seriously deplete your beard follicles.
If you go the perm route, be ready to dedicate attention to keeping your newly-relaxed mane hydrated.
If you’re not so sure you want to perm out your beard, why not consider diving deeper into other options like beard straighteners? Also, check out some beard-taming solutions for African American men.