Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2020
This stuff does what it says. I have an auto-immune disease that went undiagnosed for a couple years. It accelerated some signs of aging. Over the course of two years, my beard went from having a few stray gray hairs here and there to about 90% white. Skipped gray altogether. It also made it thin in several spots. When it comes to gray beards, there aren’t many options. Like a lot of other guys that commented, I used JFM Beard Dye for a while and it worked well. After using it without issue for about a year I started having allergic reactions to it. It was mild at first, just a bit itchy for a day or two. The reaction got worse with every subsequent use. Eventually I had to stop using it because it would take more than a week for the sores to heal and the itching to stop. I’d have a couple days of bearded bliss until the dye either grew out or faded. It was a endless cycle of self torture. I had to find another option. My wife got a dye called Bigen, which was a powder that you mix with water. It’s ammonia free and supposed to be non-allergy inducing. I tried that, still had a reaction. The only other options I could find were henna dyes but, the reviews for all of the ones I found weren’t great. I decided on the nuclear option, which was to just shave my beard off and live with a naked face. After doing that, I discovered that auto-immune disease had also given me the face of a 55 year old and I was only 42 at the time. I was ready to just live with it until my wife and son both saw my beardless face for the first time and said in unison, “Oh my God, you look old!” My wife said I needed to grow it back because she didn’t like it. I wasn’t content with having a mostly white beard at 42 years old. The problem was that my beard hair is the only hair that white. The hair on my head and the rest of my body is still mostly brown, so the white beard is in stark contrast with the hair on my head. After two months of just living with it, I couldn’t stand it anymore and decided to give JFM another try. My thinking was that maybe since I hadn’t used it for an extended period of time, I wouldn’t have such a severe reaction. My thinking was wrong. It was more severe than the last time I used it. I had peeling skin, welts and scabs on my face that took two weeks to completely heal. I was about to pull the trigger on a couple different henna dyes that I found on Amazon. I had them in my cart and was still browsing when I found Black Beard. It had better reviews than the henna dyes and although it’s not a permanent dye, I decided to give it a shot. After reading reviews, I took the advice of some other guys and ordered the dark brown color. My hair is more of a medium brown but Auburn color didn’t review well. (I have since ordered it just to try it and I don’t particularly care for it either. It’s too red for me.) When I got my first order of Black Beard I wasn’t very impressed. It was kind of messy. I keep my beard trimmed pretty short, slightly more than stubble and usually never longer than about 1/4 inch. It’s difficult to apply this to a short beard without getting it on your skin. Much of the hair along my jaw line grows parallel to my skin and I found it impossible to get full coverage in that area without getting it on my skin. If it gets on your skin, it makes you look like a kid that painted a pretend beard on with shoe polish. If I’d had another option, I’d have probably given up and tossed this in the trash. I didn’t. I stuck with it, it took a lot of trial and error over the course of a couple weeks before I finally perfected my application technique. There is a learning curve when it comes to Black Beard. There are pros and cons with this “Manscara”, as my wife calls it. Here are the cons that I’ve experienced:
1, It takes time to apply. A lot of time in the beginning, not so much now that I’ve developed a technique but, still a bit of a nusance to apply every morning. It’s an extra 5-7 minutes in front of the mirror and if your rushing to get out the door, it seems like an eternity.
2, it tends to get a little gummy and sticky toward the end of the day. This could just be me. I have pretty oily skin and the nature of my work means that I sweat from time to time, not heavily but I’m prone to a bead or two on my brow and running down my side burns. I’ve noticed a direct correlation between how much I sweat and how gummy it gets. If you wear a face moisturizer or sunscreen, don’t get it on your beard, that will make it gummy and won’t stick to the hair as well. When it gets gummy, it will rub off onto anything that brushes against it.
3, If you scratch your face, it gets under your nails. I never realized how often I touch my face throughout the day until I had to try not to. If you have an itch, don’t scratch with your finger nails, use your knuckles. It’s easier to wash or wipe it off of your knuckles that to get it out from under your finger nails. This is only a problem as the day wears on. When it’s first applied in the morning, once it’s dry I won’t come off on anything.
4, It says it’s non-irritating and this is mostly true for me, however I’ve noticed some very minor itching if I accidentally get it on my skin. It’s only occasional and not accompanied by any swelling or redness. It’s a very minor and acceptable side effect that I’ve just gotten used to dealing with.
5, if you don’t wash your face before going to bed, it will sometimes rub off on your pillow cases.
6, It’s quite difficult to wash off. At the end of the day, most of it will wash off, but a residue will remain until the following morning when I was my face a second time.
7, it makes your beard feel kind of stiff and it will glue hairs together. I’ll address how to avoid this shortly.
8, it will rub off on collard shirts if the collar rubs against your beard all day. Keep your collar away from your beard to avoid this. Guys with shorter necks may find this problematic.
Those are the cons. Now for the pros:
1, It doesn’t make your face melt off like JFM. That’s the most important thing for me.
2, You can apply as little or as much as you want and adjust the coverage level to suit your own personal preference. I like to leave a hint of white to match the level of white in the hair on my head. One of the things I didn’t like about dyes is that the coverage was too uniform and unnatural looking. Applying Black Beard lightly gives a more natural look. As a white guy, I have more variation in my hair color than a guy who’s of African, Asian or Indian decent. Their genetics usually give them a very uniform and solid hair color with no noticeable variation in color of individual strands. Before my beard turned 70 when I was 40, it had a blend of several shades or browns, reds and blonds. I can preserve the appearance of some of that natural variation with how I apply it.
3, It can help disguise any thin areas and make your beard look fuller. This is a great benefit even for younger guys who don’t need gray coverage but have a spot or two where their beard isn’t as thick as they’d like. My genetics didn’t gift me with a fantastically full and thick beard to be the envy of beard lovers everywhere. I couldn’t grow a full beard until I was in my late 20’s and even then it wasn’t very thick. Some of the hairs in a few spots on my cheeks are really fine and light in color so it looked a bit sparse in those places. Black Beard fixed what my genetic make up was lacking. It increases the diameter of the hair shaft and also darkens the lighter colored strands to even out the sparse areas and gives my beard a more uniform thickness.
4, While many other reviews mention that it expensive for the amount you get in a tube, I found that it’s actually just right. A tube will last for about a month if used sparingly like I do. It tends to dry up after repeated use, so a larger tube would likely just mean more wasted product because it would dry out before being depleted. $10 bucks a month is reasonable for me. Guys with longer beards could likely use larger tubes before they dried out but, for shorter beards like mine it’s the perfect amount because there’s very little waste. It would be nice if they offered a larger sized tube for long beards. So, those are the pros. Not as long of a list as the cons but, that’s the reason this stuff gets 4 stars from me instead of 5.
Now I give you some application tips that I’ve learned along the way.
1, Be patient. You won’t get it right the first, second or 10th time using it.
2, This is probably the most important tip for guys with shorter beards. You want very little product on the applicator when you use it. If you just pull it out and start brushing it on, it’s gonna get on your skin and make your beard strands look like spider legs. Dip the applicator and then scrape off the excess on the edge of the tube all the way around the bristles of the applicator. Get as much of it off as you possibly can. If the bristles look goopy at all, there’s too much on them. You want the bristles to have almost nothing on them.
3, Very lightly start brushing it on at the thickest part of your beard without letting the bristles touch your skin. I usually start in the center of my chin and work my way out from there. Avoid sparse areas at first until the brush is almost empty.
4, this is for short or thinner beards only, one dip is usually enough for your entire beard. Very rarely do I ever have to go in for more and if I do, I don’t go balls deep. Just the tip to pick up some of what was brushed off on the rim of the tube from the first dip. Then brush it off again around the rim while spreading it over the the whole brush. Start in a thick spot again. Don’t worry about it being too thick in a certain spot. You can fix that with tip number 6.
5. After you’ve covered the thicker spots and after the brush is mostly empty, brush it on any thin areas or areas where the hair grows parallel to your skin. When the brush has almost nothing on it and what’s left has started to dry out, you can brush against your skin without getting it on your skin. If you have thin spots, brushing the dry brush on the skin in that area will very slightly shade the thin spot and make it appear fuller and more uniform.
6, This is my last tip. After you finish applying and it’s had a minute or two to dry, go over your entire beard with a beard brush or a mustache comb. This will blend away any spots where it’s too thick as well as separating any hairs that got stuck together. It also gets rid of some of the stiffness of the hair strands and just even everything out.
Hope this helps anyone who’s considering using this product. I’ve been using it for almost 3 years and since I haven’t found another option that works for me, I’ve pretty much perfected the application process. If your like me and can’t use dyes on your beard, just remember to be patient and you’ll eventually figure out how to make applying this as painless as possible.
