The Best Beard Wash for Freshening Up Your Facial Hair

An excellent choice for folks with sensitive skin, Manscaped's shampoo and hydrating cleanser will treat your skin with the kindness it deserves. So driven is Manscaped to provide the most skin-protecting balm, that it's made its shampoo free of cruelty testing, parabens, sulfates, phthalates, and dyes—making it both vegan and delightfully soothing to the jawline. Manscaped's many other grooming products are well worth a shout for total body grooming, but if it's just the beard you're taking care of, we trust it to get the job done.

Just like its canine namesake, Bulldog packs a lot into a little. Its beard shampoo is brimming with revitalizing ingredients, such as aloe vera, camelina oil, and green tea, and it also acts as a conditioner. Beard itch will be a thing of the past thanks to this shampoo's softening properties—you’re completely taken care of.

Murdock London is looking out for men whose facial hair becomes a sponge on the daily commute. It’s pH-balanced and sulphate-free, which means it'll scrub you up without putting your beard or your skin through any more trouble. A thorough wash but a gentle product, which means the beard won't produce dandruff, often caused by harsher detergents.

Sure, Aesop's hydrating shampoo is pricey, but we're all for treating your follicles with some proper stuff every now and then. Named Equalising Shampoo because it balances natural products and oils with a fresh scent, it results in clean, fresh-smelling hair every time.

Wrought from fennel fruit, eucalyptus leaf, and mistletoe leaf, the hard-working formula will clear a hard day's graft from your hair and leave you feeling reconnected, hydrated, and nourished.

American Crew is one of our favorite brands for men's grooming and hydration, and its Precision Blend arrives with a subtle scent of rosemary and some nourishing booster packs to revitalize your beard and hair. It can also double up to extend the length of time hair dyes and colorings last, reducing fade and giving your fuzz a natural, fuller look.

A summery citrus scent accompanies this rich shampoo's dirt-busting capabilities. It actively seeks out unwanted metals found in the air's particles and clears them from your follicles, leaving them strong, clean, and firm.

Not only is the formula primed for nourishing beard hair with its argan, coconut, and an avocado oil-blend base, but it'll also remove dirt, oil, and other impurities from the skin beneath. As with everything Gillette does, it's a superbly efficient product that doubles down as an effective face wash even if you're clean-shaven—and, thanks to its conditioning abilities, will lessen the amount of beard oil needed post-use. Applied in the morning, the menthol will refresh your face as you go, then leave your facial hair with a masculine mix of sage, cedarwood, cardamom, and sandalwood.

Infused with the signature Sicilian lime scent that runs throughout the Men Rock range, this beard shampoo builds to a significant but gentle lather that doesn’t dry the skin. It's power-packed with caffeine to help restructure damaged and wiry facial hair, as well as energizing the skin that lies beneath. A great all-rounder that can be freely used on a daily basis, it is better for shorter-length facial hairstyles than ones that require extra taming.

This fresh-scented beard wash, in a generous 177ml tube, is a gentle yet effective formula that thoroughly cleans and conditions both your facial hair and (importantly) the skin underneath. Jojoba Protein provides water-binding properties that help maintain moisture in skin and hair, while pantherol helps to strengthen and add a deep penetrating condition to your whiskers. The addition of Aloe in its cocktail of effective ingredients helps soothe dryness and irritation to the skin below, which can be a negative side-effect of nurturing a fuller bushy beard.

As the name would suggest, this beard wash is particularly good for men with beyond-the-norm brittle, coarse, and untamable whiskers. It offers one of the deepest conditioning treatments available thanks to the addition of coconut oil (which also assists in detangling). A botanical extract blend naturally cleanses, while rosemary extract fights skin discomfort and irritation.

ManCave’s Blackspice Beard Wash has a surprisingly rich and luxurious lather—it's also environmentally aware, cruelty-free certified, and vegan. Even the tubes (labels, cap and all) are completely recyclable.) Formulated with tea tree oil, a natural anti-bacterial agent, to strip your beard of any nasties and supplemented with caffeine (an anti-inflammatory), jojoba, and hemp oil (to boost hydration), it has a distinctive scent the brand calls “Blackspice,” which is essentially a masculine mix combining bergamot and black pepper.

Rich and creamy in texture, almost like a moisturizer, Kalamazoo is one of Lush's most popular men's beauty products for good reason. As effective as a daily face cleanser as it is a beard shampoo, it employs 21 ingredients to leave facial hair feeling squeaky clean, with a particular highlight being fresh pineapple juice. The energizing enzymes work to rid dirt beneath the beard—a welcome addition to those more traditionally nourishing additions such as almond and jojoba oil that lend that coveted soft touch.

Tough on dirt but mild on facial hair, the Danish brand’s 8AM Splash is a savvy choice for men with sensitive skin, as it contains no harmful sulphates. Enriched with natural ingredients and powered by provitamin B5—which converts to vitamin B5 upon contact with bristles—it leaves beards feeling soft, fuller-bodied, and more manageable. Recommended to not be used more than once a day (leave it on for one minute before rinsing for greater benefits), and delivered in a gentle foam texture with a delicate citrus scent, it keeps sebum levels in check and regenerates, hydrates, and protects both your skin and beard.