I can understand being suspicious of beard wash. You already own shampoo, and the grooming industry has never had much trouble finding another bottle to sell you. If you're going to pay for a separate cleanser, you ought to know what you're getting for the money.
I've been making these products long enough to remember the conversations about what to call them. There was a reason we settled on beard wash, although looking at some of what's sold under that name now, I can see why people ask.
How We Came to Call It Beard Wash
Around 2014 or 2015, I was part of a private group of founders from some of the early beard-care companies. We talked about the products we were developing, including what to call the ones meant to clean beards.
As I remember those conversations, we were trying to get away from using conventional scalp shampoo on facial hair. Calling our products beard shampoo didn't do much to explain that. Beard wash made more sense to us.
In our case, we were working with an olive oil-based liquid soap and adding oils selected for beard care. That was the formulation we wanted customers to understand. Putting a lumberjack on a shampoo bottle would have been considerably less work.
You're Washing Your Face, Too
Shampoo removes the oil and buildup that collect on your scalp. When you wash a beard, you're working the cleanser through the hair and onto your face, so how your skin feels afterward matters just as much as whether the beard is clean.
The American Academy of Dermatology advises concentrating shampoo on the scalp rather than applying it throughout the length of the hair. Its beard-care guidance recommends washing the face and beard daily with a gentle cleanser. It also notes that soaps and shampoos can irritate the skin beneath a beard.
That last point applies to soap-based beard washes, too. Calling something beard wash doesn't automatically make it suitable for your skin. The finished product has to work for you.
When we developed ours, we had to account for both the hair and the skin underneath it. A wash that leaves your beard feeling like straw or your face tight and uncomfortable hasn't done a particularly good job, however impressive the lather looked.
AAD: Tips for healthy hair ↗
AAD: Tips for a healthy beard ↗
AAD: Common beard problems ↗
Getting the Day Out of Your Beard
I work in a cabinet shop. Dust gets into a beard, along with whatever oil and product were already there. By the end of the day, rinsing it with water isn't always going to accomplish much. A beard wash still needs enough cleaning ability to get that stuff out.
The difficulty is getting it clean without leaving the hair unpleasantly dry. The AAD notes that some shampoos can strip moisture from hair, and discusses conditioning as a way to reduce breakage and split ends. That doesn't establish that every shampoo is harsh or every beard wash is gentle. It does explain why the condition of the hair after washing deserves some attention.
AAD: Hair-care tips for fragile hair ↗
What We Mean by Superfatting
Our starting point is an olive oil-based liquid soap. We superfat it with additional oils chosen for beard care, at roughly 15 percent by weight. Those oils are part of how we've formulated the wash to leave the beard feeling after rinsing.
For every 100 grams of finished wash, roughly 15 grams are those added beard-care oils. The ingredients have similar densities, around 8.3 pounds per US gallon, so the volume comparison is approximately 15 ml of added oils per 100 ml of wash. That's nearly half the volume of a 30 ml bottle of beard oil, and it makes a meaningful difference to the cost of making it.
The wash is still a rinse-off product. Those oils are incorporated into a cleanser, so washing with it doesn't deliver the same conditioning result as applying a leave-on beard oil.
What You're Paying For
Adding those oils costs more than using the same amount of cleansing base. At the proportion we use, they're a substantial part of the formula. That's one concrete answer I can give you when you ask why our wash costs more per ounce than a large bottle of supermarket shampoo.
Whether it's worth the price is something you get to decide. I can explain what goes into ours and why we make it that way. I can't account for the price of every other bottle with beard wash printed on it.
About a Year of Testing, and One Bad Packaging Decision
Beardsman™ Beard Wash went through roughly a year of testing with customers before we were ready to settle on the product and its final packaging. The glass pump bottles in the earlier photograph were part of that process.
They looked fantastic. They were also a spectacularly bad idea for something people would handle with wet hands over a tile floor. We eventually gave up on how good they looked and changed the bottle.
The bottle we use today is recyclable and better suited to being dropped in a bathroom. Packaging was one of the things we had to get right while people were actually using the wash. A product can look perfectly sensible on a workbench.
How Often Should You Use It?
We developed our wash with daily use in mind. Whether you need that depends partly on what your beard has been through that day and how your skin responds.
My workday involves cabinet-shop dust. Someone working at a desk may have less to wash out by evening. Exercise, cooking and working outdoors can change that again. Pay attention to the buildup you're removing and to how the beard and skin feel afterward. You don't need to scrub harder just because you've decided it's wash day.
What the Label Can Tell You
Beard wash is now a broad product category. A company can buy a ready-made cleansing formula from a private-label supplier and sell it under its own brand. There's nothing inherently wrong with that arrangement; some contract manufacturers make excellent products. It does mean you can't learn much about how a wash was developed by reading the product name.
The ingredient declaration is a better place to start. Look at the cleansing ingredients and any oils or conditioning ingredients. Then compare what you're seeing with what the company says about the product. If they're claiming a particular formulation is what makes their wash different, they ought to be able to explain it.
You won't learn everything from an ingredient list. It doesn't give you the complete recipe or tell you exactly how the finished wash will feel on your face. It does give you something more useful to work with than a description of how rugged the fragrance is.
If They Won't Tell You What's In It
If I can't find an ingredient declaration, I'm not buying it. You're going to work this stuff through your beard and onto your face. Asking what's in it is a fairly reasonable request.
You shouldn't have to reverse-engineer somebody's mystery liquid, and a good photograph of an amber bottle doesn't answer the question. Look on the packaging or the product page. Ask the maker if you need to. If they still won't tell you, keep your money.
Long Ingredient Names Aren't a Verdict
Sulfates, parabens and phthalates often come up in these conversations, usually as part of a list of things a product proudly doesn't contain. Shampoos vary considerably in their cleansing systems and in the other ingredients they use. Spotting one unfamiliar word won't tell you whether the whole product is suitable for you.
I'm interested in whether the formula cleans well and leaves the beard and skin comfortable. Ingredient names can help you understand a product or avoid something you know causes you trouble. Treating every long name as a warning is a poor substitute for understanding what it's doing there. “Chemical-free” doesn't help either. Everything in the bottle is chemistry, including the oils.
When Dandruff Changes the Answer
If persistent flakes or itching brought you here, read Beard Dandruff & Beard Itch: What Causes It and What Actually Helps ↗. Dry skin is only one possible explanation.
Seborrheic dermatitis can affect the beard area, and dermatologists may recommend a medicated dandruff shampoo as part of treatment. Follow the directions for that treatment. My preference for a particular everyday beard cleanser doesn't override advice about a skin condition, and our Beard Wash isn't a treatment for one.
If you have persistent flaking, significant redness, pain, broken skin or a rash that doesn't improve, see a dermatologist.
AAD: Seborrheic dermatitis self-care ↗
Do You Need a Separate Beard Wash?
I would, and the reasons are the ones that led us to develop ours. I want to get the day's dirt out of my beard and still be able to get a comb through it afterward. I also want the skin underneath it to feel comfortable.
That doesn't mean you need to throw away a cleanser that's already working for you. If you're happy with how your beard and skin feel, you don't need me inventing a problem. If washing regularly leaves you dry or uncomfortable, it's worth looking at what you're using.
Our wash is the olive oil-based, superfatted formula I've described here. It took us a while to get it where we wanted it, and customer testing changed both the product and its packaging. If you're considering a bottle, you now know a bit more about what we made and how we got there.