So you’re thinking of growing your facial hair, but not sure which style best suits you? Chances are as a tall skinny guy you enjoy your height but aren’t too keen on making yourself look taller and thinner.
Can facial hair impact that? Of course it can.
It’s no surprise the hair on top of your head can give the illusion of increasing your height. There are plenty of hip, modern styles out there that feature high fades, short sides, and lots of volume on top. If you want to look even taller, by all means, embrace these height adding hairstyles.
But if you’re like most tall slim men, you probably want to look a little more…balanced, shall we say? That’s why you’re here after all. You want to pursue a beard style that’s going to look best on you.
With that in mind, there’s a couple of things to avoid.
1. Avoid Extremes
First, just as with your haircut, you don’t want a bunch of hair on one extreme. So, just like a long cut on top makes you look taller, so an a goatee or anchor beard adds to the length of your face. If the only hair on your face is growing on your chin, you’ll be making yourself look taller with a longer face. Probably don’t do that.
2. Be Aware of Your Lines
Second, be very aware of your lines. There are at least two lines you have to create - a cheek line and a neck line. Even guys with big full beards can have neck lines and cheek lines, and they need to shave to maintain them. It’s up to you how you want to go about doing that, and it depends on your beard style as well.
Fortunately, for tips on this and a whole lot more, we have the unparalleled Eric Bandholz to help us out. He’s slim, 6’4″ and founder of Beardbrand. Here’s his video on making a neck line:
And here’s his video on making cheek lines:
Now, as you see from the image below, I grew my facial hair for 3 weeks to take a few photos and show you how different beard styles look on a tall thin man. I’m 6’6″ and 195 lbs, by the way. And I definitely have the oblong face shape, something most of you probably have as well.
First, you can see the full beard. If you look closely, you can also see I sucked at the cheek line bit, but oh well. The full beard helps in rounding out my face.
Because my face is long and comes to a point at my chin (rather than a square chin), adding facial hair on my cheeks helps to almost widen the look of my face.
If you want to look more proportional and less long in the face, a full beard is a great choice. Of course, the photos I featured is only three weeks worth of growth. You can go for weeks, months, or even try a “yeard” which is exactly what it sounds like… a year long beard.
The second photo is when I trimmed the cheeks and kept the circle beard. As you can see side by side, losing the hair on the cheeks definitely made my face look longer. The full goatee, like the chin only goatee, is not recommended unless you are trying to elongate your face. You can judge for yourself.
Third, I went with a mustache. You’ll notice I kept stubble this whole time as I didn’t shave anything, just trimmed it down. I’m going to be honest…the mustache actually doesn’t look bad. Perhaps without the stubble it would have looked odd, but the mustache with the stubble beard was pretty good. By removing the growth on my chin it definitely helped widen it and make my face look less long.
Of course, the mustache is not for everyone. And up until actually seeing it on me, I would have said it wasn’t for anyone not named Tom Selleck. But what can I say…it’s grown on me (pun intended).
The last shot is of a straight stubble beard. This is my normal look actually. I think it has the same effect as the full beard in widening my face, but it’s easier to maintain.
So there you have it. The best beard style for a tall skinny guy is probably anything that involves somewhat balanced growth on the face and includes the hair on your cheeks. I wouldn’t advocate for a goatee style of any kind as it looks to elongate what is already a long thin face.
The choice is yours!
Grow your facial hair for a while, trim it up a few ways and take the photos yourself to see how each look compares. Then you can find the right beard style for your tall thin self.
Now…if you needed a little motivation today on being content with your skinny stature, here’s Eric from Beardbrand one more time about why he loves being skinny:
