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And today, it is all about beard wax, the brother of beard balm, the cousin of beard oil. Let’s get right to it!
Upon testing several products, I found the Honest Amish Original to be the best beard wax for regular hold and naturally shaped beard. As for mustaches, strong hold is the number one priority and the CanYouHandlebar seems to be the best mustache wax. It can sculpt some awesome handlebar mustaches that remain intact even hours after applying it.
Let’s find our more about the waxes and how this can change the way you tame your beard.
As you probably know by now, with great beard, comes great responsibility.
By that I mean conditioning, keeping it healthy and presentable. And there’s one product that can make all this happen: beard/moustache wax.
This is why I crafted this complete guide to selecting the best beard / mustache wax to fulfill all your needs. This miracle product has the ingredients to both condition and perfectly shape your beard.
Today, we’re going to focus on the five greatest beard waxes (or if you prefer best mustache waxes) to give your beard a new life. On top of that, we’ll talk about the different versions that each brand carries so that you get the beard wax with the hold that you’re looking for.
Before we dig into the details, let’s check out the specs of the five best beard waxes reviewed.
The 5 Best Beard Waxes
Honest Amish Original Beard Wax | Fisticuffs Strong Hold Mustache Wax | Wild Willies Mustache Wax | Can You Handlebar Secondary Mustache Wax | Badger Balm Mustache Wax | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Country | USA | USA | USA | USA | USA |
Size | 2oz / 60ml | 1oz / 30ml | 2oz / 60ml | 0.75oz / 21ml | 0.75oz / 21ml |
Ingredients | argan oil avocado oil grapeseed oil virgin pumpkin seed oil apricot kernal oils shea butter cocoa butter kokum nut essential oils | coconut oil shea butter beeswax tea tree oil pure apricot oil jojoba oil sweet almond oil vitamin E aloe vera essential oils | shea butter argan oil beeswax almond oil avocado oil jojoba oil apricot kernel oil bay rum essential oil | beeswax USP lanolin shea butter castor oil coconut oil vitamin E essential oils | beeswax sweet almond oil apricot oil jojoba oil castor oil argan oil emu oil vitamin E tea tree oil cedar wood oil rosemary oil |
All natural | |||||
Greasy Feeling | |||||
Duration | |||||
Hold | |||||
Ease of Application | |||||
Value for Money | |||||
Price | $ | $$ | $$ | $$$ | $$ |
But when did we actually start to care about waxes anyway?
Beard and mustache waxes didn’t appear just now. In fact, they’ve been around for longer than beard oils, beard balms and anything related to beard care products.
If you think about it, it’s only been a few years ever since the demand for beard oils boomed.
Wax was always the faithful companion of the man who wanted a well tamed mustache and beard. And it still is.
Although beard and mustache waxes don’t have such appeal as beard oils and balms, they’re a crucial component of a man’s beard grooming arsenal.
It’s no surprise that many men may use only wax and disregard oil or balm. Truth be told, it’s the only beard care product that can literally transform the looks of your facial hair.
Now, if your beard is like mine, when it grows a bit long, it starts getting a life on its own. Heading to every direction, with a few curly parts while the rest remain straight. A twisted personality indeed!
And on top of everything, there’s also the bedbeard.
You know, the way your beard looks when you sleep with your face on the pillow. If you experienced that before you already know how difficult taming is without washing the whole thing.
That’s exactly where wax does its magic!
Besides taming your beard, wax can also help you shape your beard in any way you want. Sometimes you can do such weird -not to mention disturbing, shapes that is feels as if your beard defies the laws of physics.
No matter the reason you’re using beard wax for, one thing is certain: any men who grow a beard and cares about his appearance can’t live without beard wax.
So, let’s see what’s on this guide:
- What’s a beard / mustache wax
- Differences between balms and waxes
- Criteria to select a beard wax
- The four best beard waxes reviewed
- Final thoughts
Let’s get to it!
What is a beard / mustache wax
Facial hair wax is a beard styling product with main purpose to give you a strong hold and natural -or why not unnatural, shape.
Let’s get to some specifics.
It’s called like that mainly because of the ingredient that is found in higher percentage giving your beard the strong hold. And as you probably guessed, we’re talking about the wax.
Beard wax is normally a mix of natural ingredients. Depending on the amount of each ingredient, you should expect different properties.
More specifically, the type and amount of ingredients in the mix can determine the wax’s strength in terms of hold and how easy application is.
Speaking of ingredients, beard waxes normally contain all natural ingredients. There are mainly four types of ingredients and we’ll analyse them later on in this article.
As a heads up, these are the following:
- Wax
- Butter
- Carrier oils
- Essential oils
What is the difference between beard balm and beard / mustache wax
This is something that many bearded men are wondering as both products may even have the same appearance.
Let’s start by saying that both products could contain similar ingredients.
It’s no coincidence that there are many brands that are using the same type and even the exact same ingredients when it comes to production of the two products.
The only difference between these two are the amounts of butter and wax in the mix.
Therefore, as you may appreciate, the beard wax contains higher amount of beeswax and lower amount of butters.
The other difference is the intended use.
The goal of beard balm has to do with the conditioning part of a beard rather than shaping it. There are however many beard balms that contain a decent amount of beeswax and they give your beard a little bit of hold.
On the other hand, beard wax is for shaping. Beard waxes with more beeswax give your mustache and beard a strong hold that allows you to sculpt your facial hair, literally, in any way you can think of.
You could also say that one other difference is the size of the container. Normally, beard waxes have double the volume of beard balms.
You only need a very small amount of wax to work on your beard in order to give it some shape and therefore, a little goes a long way.
One last difference is the application onto your beard.
With beard balm, rubbing it in between your palms is more than enough to melt it and start massaging it into your beard.
With beard wax though, this process is a bit more challenging.
As beard wax contains higher amount of wax, it makes the consistency harder and it’s more difficult to scrape it out of the container and eventually melt it.
In some cases you might even want to use a blow drier to melt a part of the beard wax and apply it quickly on your mustache.
There might also be some cases that it becomes solid before you apply it on your beard.
Criteria to selecting the best beard mustache wax
Hold
Hold is obviously the number one reason why you want to get a beard wax in the first place.
Now, depending on what you want to achieve, you normally have to choose among three hold levels
- Light hold
- Medium hold
- Strong hold
The light hold is the wax that will give your beard a bit of shape and tame the unruly hair on your mustache and beard.
This type of wax doesn’t leave you any room for creativity as it’s more like a balm with a bit more wax in its mix.
Now, the medium hold allows you for some experimentation. It’s able to tame shorter beard styles and can help you with mustache shaping.
Again, with this type of beard wax you’ll get stronger hold but not strong enough to give you a very stiff feeling.
Normally, with this type of beard waxes you’re aiming for natural look but at the same time, you want the hold to last.
Bikers will appreciate this level of beard hold.
As for the strong hold, I prefer to call those mustache waxes rather than beard waxes.
We previously noted that this type of wax gives your beard a very strong hold. For this reason, it allows you to sculpt the beard shape that you’ve got in mind.
I call it mustache wax because most men, including myself, want strong hold on their mustache rather than on their beards.
You might wonder why and the answer is fairly simple.
It’s mainly because after applying the wax, the beard feels stiff, crunchy and it also looks and feels very unnatural.
Have you ever seen any beard or mustache competition? All participants are wearing on their beards the strongest waxes possible so that they achieve all those shapes that you only see in Sci-Fi movies.
Looking for some inspiration?
Take for example the Incredibeard facebook page and get some ideas on your next beard shaping experiment. Truly priceless!
Ingredients
We’ve already made a brief introduction on the ingredients that most beard waxes are made of.
If you remember, these are normally four: wax, butters and oils (carrier and essential).
Wax for the shape
The most popular wax being used in such products is natural beeswax. It’s the one ingredient that gives the product its solid state as well as the hold you so much want.
As indicated, the more beeswax a beard wax has, the stronger the hold and the harder the consistency.
Butter for the spread
The butters that are normally found in beard wax are the exactly the same as in beard balms. Some quick examples are cocoa, shea, avocado.
Natural butters help the wax melt in your hands and they also help with spreading it on your beard. Without the butters, the beard wax would remain solid.
Many wax producers include coconut oil in the mix for spreading. The reason is that it behaves like butter, and it helps with melting. It also gives the wax better consistency.
Carrier oils for conditioning
The rest of the ingredients are natural oils.
Carrier oils such as coconut, jojoba, argan, hemp seed and others, are used to condition your beard and skin. These are also the same ingredients that are used in beard oil recipes as they are perfect for softening a beard.
Essential oils for personality
Apart from the carrier, you’ll also find essential oils but in much smaller percentages. These oils are giving the beard wax a bit of personality, and more particularly, the scent.
You’ll find different mixes of essential oils that give a beard care product its unique scent.
Scent
Speaking of scent, we already talked about the naturally derived one with the use of essential oils.
There are other cases that the scent may come from synthetic fragrances.
No matter the beard wax that you select, the scent is quite important as you’ll be literally be putting the wax on your face.
If you buy one online, it might be a good idea to choose a fragrance-free version -if there’s any, to assess the quality of the product and at a later stage, you try out the scented ones.
Price
Most of beard waxes come in small round tins or chapstick like tubes.
In most -if not all, cases, beard wax isn’t more than 1 oz as only a small amount is more than enough to cover your beard.
Taking the above into consideration, the price for wax ranges between $6 and $20 and normally, shouldn’t cost more than that.
How to apply beard wax / mustache wax
Depending on the consistency of the wax, you might need to adapt the application procedure.
First of, when the wax isn’t hard on the surface, rubbing your fingers against the surface should be more than enough to load your fingers with some wax. Upon that, you can rub it between your palms and fingers and massage it into your mustache or beard.
When the wax is harder, you might have to scrape it with the back of your thumbnail to get it out of the container and then massage it between your palms and fingers. Once you do that, you follow the same procedure as previously described.
The only difference is when the wax if very hard. In such case, the best thing you can do is getting a blowdryer and warm it up until the wax starts melting.
Once you see some wax that starts melting, you need to be quick. If the surface is hard this probably means that it gets solid quickly after you melt it.
So once the wax is in liquid form, you load your fingers with some of it and without wasting any time, you massage and apply it on your mustache or beard.
When the wax is that hard, it normally means (with a few exceptions) that the hold that you get is very strong. When this happens, you might be probably looking at mustache wax rather than at beard wax.
And how do I know it?
Well, this kind of strong hold is something that men with mustaches are looking as the beard won’t look very natural.
On the other hand, a handlebar mustache looks great, and for such hold, the mustache doesn’t feel natural or soft. But that’s what you’re aiming for, right?
The best beard / mustache wax
Honest amish beard wax original
If you’ve been using beard care products for while now, I’m sure you’re familiar with Honest Amish.
I’ve used many of their products already and I’m a big fan of their beard oil. Their beard balm is also one of the best out there and I would highly recommend it for anyone to try it out at least once.
Now, this Honest Amish beard wax, is the “original” version and it gives a medium hold. Other beard waxes that the company produces are the “Slick” and “Extra Grit” and it gives to your beard light, respectively strong hold.
Therefore, depending on the amount of hold that you want your beard to have, you can choose either of these two.
For me, the Original is what makes my beard look naturally soft while it gives it a great shape.
As for the application, it’s one of those beard waxes that you need to scrape them out of the tin and then melt it either with your fingers or with your palms. This depends on where you want it to apply it.
Since I’m using it on my entire beard, I melt it in the palms and then massage the hair without reaching the face.
Once you apply this wax, it will give your beard a very natural hold but it’s relatively strong. Though, after a few hours it feels as if it’s absorbed by the hair. This is particularly good when you want to wash your beard.
That being said, this beard wax doesn’t weigh down your beard and it doesn’t feel very greasy. If you’ve got a bushy looking beard, this beard wax is perfect as it doesn’t make your beard stiff and it still allows you to use a wide teeth comb.
The scent is very masculine and if I can describe it a bit foresty and you can also feel the beeswax. It feels as if it’s got some clove scent but I’m not too sure about it.
In terms of price, the Honest Amish products are very reasonably priced and this wax isn’t any different. It’s affordable compared to the competition and it comes in a aluminium tin that is larger than most beard waxes out there.
Overall, the Honest Amish beard wax offers a great value for the price.
Would I recommend it? Without second thought. If you ask me, this is definitely one of the top beard waxes you can get.
Fisticuffs Cigar Blend Strong Hold Mustache Wax 1 OZ. Tin
Fisticuffs is a beard care company that is pretty much one of the most popular brands out there.
Just like the Honest Amish, they’ve been around for a while and they’re known for great quality and decent prices.
I had the chance of trying out few other products including their beard balms and beard oils. In fact, they’ve got two beard oil scents that I absolutely love.
But enough with the other products. What about this beard wax?
First of, it comes in a small 1 oz tin, which is pretty much the same as many other brands.
By the time you open it, you immediately feel the great scent that is a combination of vanilla and cigar. The cigar isn’t very strong in case you’re worried about it. This scent stays with you a couple of hours after you apply it on your beard but it doesn’t feel overpowering.
Speaking of application, the texture is hard but not as hard as other beard waxes that I’ve tried.
You need to rub your fingers on the surface of the wax and as you rub them, the wax becomes softer and you can start applying it on your mustache and beard.
You can also rub it in between your palms to melt it even better.
When it comes to hold, I would consider it medium. With this in mind, this wax is perfect if you want to give your beard a nice looking shape without feeling stiff. So, if you’re looking for a wax with very strong hold, this isn’t one of them.
One other thing that I like is that after applying the wax, you can still use a wide teethed comb to further groom it and tame the hair.
Something that I didn’t like in the beginning was the ingredient petroleum jelly as it sounds a bit synthetic. But after conducting a quick search, it turns out that this is far from the truth.
Petroleum jelly is actually a blend of natural waxes and mineral oils and is also used for other products like balms. http://www.vaseline.us/skin-health-care/what-is-petroleum-jelly.html
Finally, the price of this wax is not going to cost you much, just like most products by Fisticuffs.
Overall, the Grave Before Shave is a top beard wax that comes at a price that every man loves.
Wild Willies mustache wax original
I had the chance of using Wild Willie’s products in the past, and more particularly, their beard balm.
I had very good experience with their balm and I thought I should give their wax a try.
When you pop the tin open and touch the surface you feel the hard texture right away. Nothing surprising if you’ve used a beard wax before.
The hold of this product is very similar to the previously mentioned products although it feels a bit lighter. It gives you something between light to medium hold.
It’s a bit hard to come out of the container and you might need to either use your thumbnail to scrape it out or use a blow dryer to melt it a bit. Once you manage that, it melts easily in your palms and you can massage it onto your beard without too much trouble.
The hold stays a few good hours and depending on how much product you apply, it might feel a bit sticky. It takes a bit to get used to it and apply the right amount. After several uses, you won’t have any trouble getting it right.
As for the scent, it’s a subtle mix of cedar and pine. Very manly and pleasant.
Pricewise, it costs more than other products that I personally like more.
Does it worth it? I’d say yes.
I think that you could at least give it a try. It’s definitely a good product but in my opinion it’s priced a bit higher than it can deliver.
Is this the best beard wax you can get for this price?
In terms of price to value, doesn’t score a straight A, but you would definitely not regret getting it.
CanYouHandlebar secondary mustache wax
Now, here’s one of my preferred beard care companies.
I’ve tried several products from Canyouhandlebar over more than two years and I’m a particular big fan of their beard brush.
Apart from the brush, they do have some other premium beard products that leave no bearded man untouched.
The Canyouhandlebar product gives the strongest hold among the reviewed beard waxes.
This is more like a mustache wax rather than a beard wax, unless of course you’re looking for some unnatural curls and stiff feeling on your goatee.
It’s called secondary for a very particular reason. It’s about shaping the mustache while there’s the primary version that doesn’t give you such strong hold and it’s more appropriate for beard shaping.
So if you’re looking to shaping your handlebar mustache, this is the wax to go for.
As this is a very strong wax, it’s highly anticipated that the texture is pretty hard. That said, I can get it out better with the use of a blow dryer until the surface starts melting.
Once the wax melts, it’s highly advised to apply it right away as it tends to get solid again within seconds.
You don’t need too much product to get great results on your mustache and that’s the best part. Even though the container is the standard 1 oz tin, a little goes a long way. This wax is going to last you for a few good months until you consider buying a new one.
If it all comes down to price, this isn’t the cheapest one out there. It delivers great value though and it lasts for a considerable amount of time. If you’re searching for the best mustache wax, you might be looking at the right place.
Badger Balm mustache wax
Last but not least, the Badger Balm mustache wax.
This is a company I wasn’t familiar with but it has some very good reviews and I thought I should give it a try.
What does the jury say? Pleasantly surprised.
So, this is branded as a mustache wax, although I would consider it a beard wax.
Unless you’re looking for a strong hold for your handlebar, this might be a good product. My impression after using it though is that it makes a great wax for beards.
When you first apply it, you can feel that your beard starts going to the right direction, and that is the direction you want it to go.
The hold is firm but not stiff and it also allows a comb to shape it. Your beard looks naturally tamed.
The wax itself isn’t as hard as other waxes and you can easily take it out of its tin. Application, is similarly simple without too much effort as it spreads out without any blowdryer heat.
One other reason why I consider it beard wax rather than mustache is the durability. As mentioned, the hold is medium and after a couple of hours the hold is completely gone.
It leaves a bit greasy feeling after a few hours that the hold is gone. However, it washes out easily which is a big plus.
As for the scent, it’s a subtle sweet one with hints of vanilla. Even if you’re not a big fan of the particular scent, it’s not overpowering at all.
The size of the tin is a bit smaller than others, measuring 0.75 oz. Because of this, the price per volume is a bit higher than other competitive products but not by a lot.
Closing thoughts
Beard wax isn’t just another beard care product.
As we’ve seen in this article, wax is able to tame your beard and mustache, while conditioning and keeping your facial hair healthy.
Besides the price, the ingredients and the level of hold are the two things that you need to keep in mind for your very best beard wax.
There are certainly more products that we didn’t have the chance of trying out. And of course there are other products out there that might work better for you. But the five reviewed beard waxes are a great starting point should have no experience with this kind of products.
If you believe that we missed something great, feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section. We’ll be happy to review it and why not, include it in this article.
If you enjoyed this guide, take a look at our other related guides:
- The best beard combs for your grooming needs
- The guide to the best beard oils
- Selecting the top beard trimmer for neat beards
- Best beard balms for a conditioned and well shaped beards
- Beard oil recipes and how to make one step by step
- Beard balm recipes and instructions to make your own
- Getting the best beard brush to upgrade your beard grooming routine
Main Image Courtesy: Langstrup Photography/BigStock.com