Best beard oils to soften and groom your facial hair

Proof that money doesn’t always buy you a better product, Bulldog’s original beard oil offers the best bang for your buck (or beard) of all the oils we tried. Good value for money, it also performed excellently and the subtle fragrance is good, too.

The addition of aloe vera (to soothe skin and condition hair) and antioxidant green tea extract (with its antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties) makes this oil a brilliant buy.

Infused with the immaculately groomed Texan’s signature oud wood fragrance, this high-shine, luxury beard oil will have your beard smelling upmarket and designery in no time.

What you pay for in this particular beard conditioner isn’t the oils (it contains the grape seed, almond and jojoba oil trio found in many other beard oils) but the best-selling designer fragrance, which is warm, woody and spicy. It offers a completely different way to wear the fragrance, and Ford fans will be pleased to know that the oil is also available in “tobacco vanille” and “f***ing fabulous” fragrance variants.

While most beard oils stick to a fairly predictable list of ingredients, Heath’s formula does something a bit different by throwing salicylic acid into the mix. Used in most blemish-busting products for its exfoliating properties, this gentle acid helps to keep pores and hair follicles free of the grease, grime and dead skin cells that can help cause spots and ingrown hairs. It’s a clever addition and one that makes this beard oil particularly good for guys with spot-prone skin, or for those who suffer from ingrown hairs in the early stages of beard growing.

A light, slightly minty fragrance makes it refreshing, and its non-oily texture earned it another thumbs-up from us.

The perfect multifunctional grooming oil, this lightweight 2-in-1 shave and beard oil features a blend of nourishing oils (hazelnut, jojoba and grapeseed) along with antioxidant-rich rosehip.

These all-natural ingredients make the oil perfect for conditioning whiskers but also for shaving around the beard line, where its transparency allows you to see where you’re shaving. It has a subtle minty fragrance, too, making it one of the more refreshing oils we tried.

Featuring 100 per cent naturally derived ingredients, this lightweight, vegan-friendly beard oil uses argan and jojoba oils to keep facial fuzz smooth and silk. It also has a delicious but unobtrusive combo of orange and rosemary oils to leave your whiskers smelling fresh.

We gave this oil extra points for its generous size (50ml), the cool slimline bottle design and secure plastic cap (making it perfect for travel), and for the fact it has a pump dispenser, which makes measuring out a cinch. The brand might sound Scandinavian but they’re actually British – they just dig Scandi chic.

New York-based fragrance house Le Labo has a reputation for producing amazing luxury perfumes and grooming products, so the quality of this plant-based bear oil is pretty much as you would expect: exceptional.

Ironically, it’s the scent that plays a back seat here (it’s a surprisingly unobtrusive blend of fresh and aromatic bergamot, lavender, violet and tonka bean) to the conditioning oils and – dare we be so shallow –  the uber-cool apothecary-style bottle. A word of warning, though: said bottle has a wide opening, so take extra care when pouring into your palms.

After a beard oil that makes your facial fuzz smell sweet and sexy? Then look no further than this tobacco and vanilla number. Made with 99 per cent ingredients of a natural origin and featuring nourishing castor oil from Jamaica, this heady formula has a creamy, gourmand smell that’s sensual and almost edible.

It lasts a fair while on the beard, too, which is always the mark of well-formulated fragranced oil. The Horace range also offers “patchouli and cedarwood” and “lemon and mint” variants, but this “tobacco and vanilla” one is by far the sexiest.

If how a beard oil looks on your bathroom shelf is as important as how it makes your beard look, this luxury oil – housed in a cool frosted-green glass bottle – is for you.

Like the other oils tested, it’s designed to keep facial hair soft and silky, but it also contains cedarwood oil to help regulate production of sebum (the skin’s natural oil), so is especially good if you suffer from greasy skin. The smell is old-school masculine, too – think tobacco, leather and woods.

More like a moisturiser than a traditional oil, this beard and stubble softener is designed to be as good for skin as it is for stubble, which explains why it’s packed with skin-friendly avocado oil and soothing aloe vera. Another goodie in this oil’s arsenal is Kahai oil, which contains 50 per cent more nourishing vitamins than the argan oil often used in beard and hair conditioners.

We especially liked the fact that you can apply this oil liberally to shorter stubble without your face feeling greasy or sticky (if anything, it makes skin and hair feel silky) and the subtle oud and Egyptian mallow fragrance. At 100ml, it’s generously sized, too.

With more beard-supporting ingredients than just about any other oil we tried, this luxurious, silicone-free formula contains a plethora of nourishing oils, including borage oil, which is packed full of hair-friendly fatty acids.

This oil softens, nourishes and smooths, without being greasy, and thanks to the addition of bergamot, jasmine and bitter orange oils, it also has one of the best – and longest-lasting – fragrances of all the oils we tried. Can be used to give shine to the hair on your head, too.

Formulated with no less than 10 individual oils – each performing a slightly different function but all leading to a glossy, healthy beard – this conditioner is a beard basic anyone can buy with confidence.

Key to its performance is argan oil – famed for its ability to nourish and soften hair, which makes it especially good for first-timers hoping to minimise the itch. The oil’s infused with a long-lasting retro scent featuring woods and spices, too.

A slightly different kind of beard oil from the others, we road-tested this fragrance-free formula, which is designed more as a treatment than a straightforward beard conditioner.

It features oils (all 100 per cent organic) designed to feed the hair follicles and improve blood circulation to your whiskers – the idea being that this helps stimulate growth and, over time, increase beard thickness.

It also has the best brand name of all the oils here. (Sweyn was the first Viking King of England and Canute’s dad, in case you were wondering.)

If anyone knows about how to fuss over face furniture, it’s master barber Matthew Raine, whose Mr Natty oils have been keeping men’s beards looking their best since 2009.

This beard elixir is the brand’s signature product and you can see why: it’s rich and conditioning, and a little goes a long way. It’s also infused with three of the most popular ingredients in men’s fragrances – vetiver, patchouli and bergamot – along with a hint of pine for freshness, which help make it the no-brainer of beard oils.