A Boxed Beard, sometimes called the corporate beard, is one of the most classic and attractive short beard styles of all time. 

It is a beard for any man that communicates not only class but style. The Boxed beard is a full beard that has been groomed to about half an inch in length. The beard is characterized by contours and sharp lines that make it resemble a box around the jawline. 

The beard is ideal for any man who wants to grow a full-face beard without dealing with the volume of the traditional full beard. 

What Is a Boxed Beard

A boxed beard is a neatly trimmed beard that resembles a full beard without the ruggedness and volume. Boxed beards are closely cropped and sculpted with fine lines and edges to create a boxed appearance around the jawline. 

The boxed beard follows natural hair growth. The cheek line should have a steep angular cut or a straight line in a typical boxed beard. The neckline is also trimmed as close to the natural jawline edge as possible rather than close to Adam’s apple like in other beard styles. 

One of the characteristics of a boxed beard is that the beard is trimmed evenly for a clean and sharp look which is why the beard is sometimes referred to as the corporate beard.  

Benefits of a Boxed Beard

Neatly Sculpted

The boxed beard is neatly sculpted, resulting in a shorter and neatly trimmed beard without all the bulk of a full beard. The sculpting contours the shape of the face outlining the jaw, mouth, chin, and sides of your face.

Stylish and Classy Beard

The good thing about a boxed beard is that it is a beard for every man who doesn’t want to deal with the volume of a full beard. The beard style is stylish and it’s also one of the classiest beard styles in the world.

Formal Beard

There are so many reasons why you would choose a boxed beard over a full beard. The beard style is versatile and, at the same time, suitable for almost all workplace environments. The neat finish of a boxed beard makes it possible to fit into any conservative setting where an extravagant beard style would be frowned upon. 

How Does a Boxed Beard Work

The boxed beard style is contoured to your facial structure, heightening your angular features without the excessive styling some beard styles demand. 

The cheek line is trimmed so that the cheekbones are more prominent while the touch of volume highlights the jawline. While the boxed beard is easy to maintain, the defined contours mean needing frequent touch-ups; at least thrice a week. 

Due to the grooming that is required with a boxed beard style, at the end of the day, if you are doing the grooming at home, you need to know what you are doing. 

Pros and Cons of Growing a Boxed Beard

Pros

• The contouring ends up highlighting your facial features in a good way when done right.
• The boxed beard style can work for any conservative workplace environment hence why it’s referred to as the corporate beard.  
• The beard is closely cropped and well-groomed with the natural growth of the hair resulting in a beard that is neat enough to complement any haircut and a mustache mug with a unique design. 
• A boxed beard style accentuates your masculinity while maintaining a well-groomed look.
• The beard style is well suited for any face shape and the styling is what makes all the difference.

Cons

• Maintaining the beard styles requires a particular set of skills which not many people possess.
• With a boxed beard style, you are looking at more grooming time, possibly three or four times a week, to maintain the style. 

Types of Boxed Beard

Short Boxed Beard

The short boxed beard is trimmed to half an inch, with the cheek line remaining clean and the neckline trimmed up to your jawline. 

How clean you shave your cheek will depend on your preferences. For instance, if your beard grows in patches on the cheeks, you can clean-shave that area for a low cheek line and a thin chin strap on the jawline. 

Medium Boxed Beard

The medium boxed beard style is not different from the short boxed style, with the only difference being that the chin hair in the medium boxed beard is grown out to around 2 inches of length. 

The chin hair will then be sculpted into a box style to trim the jawline and the cheek line. 

Long Boxed Beard

The long beard style differs from the other two with the length of the beard. The chin hair is grown out to a much longer length and then trimmed into a box style. Since the chin hair is longer, the beard style wouldn’t work for all corporate settings like the short and medium boxed beard styles. 

Boxed Beard and Different Face Shapes

Diamond Face

If you have a diamond face, a low cheek line will highlight your sharp facial features, while a high cheek line will soften them.  

If you opt for low cheek lines, ensure that you don’t go too low, as this can give you a gaunt effect. If you have a diamond face shape, you are better off with a natural-looking trim that doesn’t chisel your facial features too much. 

Heart Face

For men with heart face shapes, low or high cheek lines will do as they strengthen an already weak jawline and chin.

You could also go for added growth around your chin to strengthen your facial features further. A natural and more extended beard look will look much better on someone with a heart face shape. 

Oblong Face

If you have an oblong face shape, you want to go for a beard style that chisels out your features by widening, squaring, and shortening the face and a boxed beard style does just that. 

A short boxed beard would be ideal for such a face shape since it reduces the length while adding the volume and texture that you need to strengthen your facial features. 

Oval Face

If you have an oval shape, then you are in luck because there are very few shortcomings of this beard style on your face shape. The only thing you need to make sure of is that you keep the style balanced.  

Round Face

A short boxed style works best for round face shapes since it makes a face appear squarer. Go for sharp contours and low cheek lines to add that extra definition to strengthen your facial features. 

Square Face

While a square face shape goes well with a boxed beard style, avoid short boxed beard styles and opt for softer contours to help blend in the features for a fuzzier and textured style. 

Triangle Face

A boxed beard with high cheek lines is ideal for those with triangular face shapes since such a style adds texture and redistributes the jawline up your cheekbones. 

How to Grow a Boxed Beard 

Step 1 – Allow your facial hair to grow

Whether you want a short, medium, or long boxed beard style, the first thing you need to do is to leave your facial hair to grow for two to four weeks, depending on your hair growth rate. A boxed beard is simply a full beard that has been trimmed evenly, which is why you need a good length to work with. 

Step 2 – Understand your cheek line and neckline

Once you have a suitable thickness and length, you need to understand your cheek line and neckline before you begin trimming, especially if you are going for a short boxed style. 

A boxed beard goes with any face shape, but not all face shapes have defined cheek lines and necklines. For instance, to determine your neckline, tilt your head up and picture a three-point line that starts from your left ear, through your Adam’s apple to your right ear.

Trim the hair below the neckline such that it angles up towards the ear. When you do that, the back edges of the jawline should line up with the edges of the sideburns.

To determine your cheek line, visualize a line beginning at the center of your ear towards the edge of the mustache. You need to trim the cheek hair to match this line by creating a natural slope to the face. 

This is the point you determine if you want high cheek lines or low ones. Low cheek lines are ideal if the hair on the cheeks grows in patches, in which case you can always do with a reliable hair loss shampoo.

Step 3 – Trim your beard

After determining your cheek line and neckline, you can go ahead and start trimming your beard. The first thing you need to do is clean the beard with a good beard shampoo and conditioner, then use a pair of sharp trimming scissors to shape the beard. 

You can also use the world’s best beard shaping tool, especially if you are doing the shaping for the first time. 

After you’ve shaped the beard, you can then use a razor to shave off any excess hair so that the lines look crisp and clean. 

Step 4 – Clean up the rest of the beard

When your beard is fully shaped, you can trim the rest of the beard to your desired length, ensuring that the resulting length will be uniform on all sides. 

When you are trimming, keep combing the hair to make sure that the length is uniform. Once you are done, you can clean your beard and then use good quality beard butter that helps prevent beard dandruff moving forward.

How to Trim and Style a Boxed Beard 

Step 1 – Reduce the height of cheek lines

The height of the cheek lines is what distinguishes a boxed beard from other beard styles. As such, the first thing you need to do is to reduce their height using a razor but be sure to leave the sideburns wide. 

Step 2 – Define the sloping contours

Using a trimmer or a razor blade, define the sloping contours to your cheek lines from the sideburns. 

Step 3 – Clean shave the area around Adam’s apple

With a boxed beard, any hair growth around Adam’s apple is removed for a clean look.

Step 4 – Define an oval contour

Using a razor, the next thing you need to do is define an oval contour about 1 to 1.5 inches below your jawline. After that, shave any hair around the neck. 

Step 5 – Neaten your mustache

The final step is to neaten the mustache as well as the soul patch by trimming them down.

If you are trimming and styling a boxed beard for the first time, the result will not be as perfect, but they should improve with a bit of practice. 

When it comes to maintaining your boxed beard, beard balm can make your beard feeling soft, while an appropriate beard conditioner and a premium beard shampoo will keep the beard looking clean and smelling good. 

High Boxed vs Low Boxed Beard

The boxed beard style has two distinct variations; the high boxed and low boxed beard styles. The low boxed beard is characterized by lower cheek lines such that the beard almost resembles a thick chinstrap.

This is a great style for men who don’t grow hair on the upper cheeks. On the other hand, the high boxed beard has high cheek lines and is, in most cases, the better-looking variation of the boxed beard.

However, you should only go for this beard style if the hair on your upper cheeks is thick and has the right volume to pull off the look.

Most Popular Boxed Beard Styles

Angular Boxed Style

If you want a manlier look, then trim sharp angles into your beard. With this style, your hair should follow your jawline with sharp angles close to the ears. 

Salt and Pepper Style

If you have gray hairs on your beard, the salt and pepper style is the best beard style to show them off. With this style, a few gray hairs will give your beard a softer dusky appearance that will make you look even more masculine if that’s what you’re going for.

Stubbly Boxed Style

Stubble hair always makes a man look rugged and handsome at the same time and it’s no different with the stubbly boxed beard style. If you are going for a more masculine look, leave your hair to grow over your lower cheeks and maintain the style with crisp lines.

Classic Boxed Beard

This is one of the beard styles that can’t go out of style. The beard style accentuates your jawline, making you look masculine and stylish at the same time. The beard style is also one of the easiest to maintain.

Box Fade Style

The box fade style highlights sections of your face. You can also add a mustache to draw attention to the lips. At the same time, maintaining thicker hair across the chinstrap area will help strengthen your jawline. 

Elongated Look

This beard style is best suited for people who have a heart or round face shapes. The long look gives you a longer-looking face. This is achieved by changing the angle of the hairline, whereby a steeper angle will make your face look longer. 

Minimalist Boxed Beard

For men who are going for the most minimalist looks, maintain hair growth at the chinstrap section. To pull off this style, you need to be ready to trim your beard every day to keep that clean and sharp look. 

Thick Boxed Style

If you are going for a more intense look, a thick boxed beard style will do. With this style, the darker the beard color, the better it gives a full-on flavor kind of look.

Boxed Beard With a Bald Head

If you are going bald or prefer a bald haircut, a long boxed beard style is great to draw attention to your beard rather than your bald head. At the end of the day, though, a bald head looks excellent with a full beard, whether long or short. 

Do’s And Don’ts With a Boxed Beard

Do’s

• Do determine your cheek line and neckline before you begin trimming so that you can have clean lines. 
• Do shave according to your face shape. For instance, people who have round face shapes are better off with a medium or long boxed beard that elongates the face.
• Do trim and clean your boxed beard three or four times a week so that you can have clean and well-defined lines.
• Do ensure that you trim your beard to an exact length to pull off the boxed beard look.
• Do use a beard shaping tool if you are trimming a boxed beard for the first time to get the lines just fine.

Don’ts

• When shaping the neckline, don’t trim too much so that you have a high neckline. With the cheek line, you can go high or low depending on the look you are going for. 

FAQ About Boxed Beard

How do you get a boxed beard?

A boxed beard is achieved by trimming the cheek lines and the neckline to form neat and clean lines that make the beard appear box-shaped. Depending on the look you are going for, you can trim the cheek lines high or low, but trimming low is ideal if your cheek hair grows in patches. For the rest of the beard, you have to trim it down to about half an inch long and make sure that it’s uniform on all sides. 

How long does it take to grow a boxed beard?

How long it will take you to grow a boxed beard will depend on the variation you are going for. For short boxed beard styles, you are looking at about a month of growth. The medium and long boxed beards take longer. You are looking at two to three months for the medium boxed beard and up to eight months for the long boxed beard. 

How long is a boxed beard?

A boxed beard is typically trimmed to half an inch and a full inch above Adam’s apple around the neckline region and comes with angular boxed edges.

Which famous people wear the short boxed beard?

The short boxed beard is rocked by celebrities like Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bradley Cooper, Jon Hamm, George Lucas, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, George Clooney, and John Krasinski, alongside many others.

Conclusion

A boxed beard is one of the classic beard styles, but that does not mean that it’s a boring style. The boxed beard is versatile in that it suits all manner of social and corporate settings. It is also well suited to all face shapes. The beard is characterized by clean and well-contoured lines that form the box shape. To grow the box beard, you need to let your facial hair grow and then trim it down to about half an inch which is the classic boxed beard length. 

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