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Wash and dry your beard before shaping it up. Clean up the lines of your cheeks. Trim stray hairs to an even length.
Use shampoo and conditioner to clean and soften your facial hair regularly. After showering, hold off on trimming or styling until your beard has had time to fully dry and reassume its original form. This is when it will be most manageable, as it will have a little extra volume and look like it will when you're out walking around. A few passes with a blowdryer on a low heat setting can help speed up the drying time. Attempting to shape a wet, limp beard is risky because the hairs will draw up and change shape as they dry. Guide your clippers along the upper perimeter of your beard to get rid of fuzzy overgrown edges. Ideally, your facial hair should be just as thick at the top as it is at the bottom instead of becoming sparse and fading away. The same rules apply even if you decide to trim it down nearer to your jawline. Generally, it's best not to let your beard climb any higher than the points of your cheeks. It may help to visualize a line running from the top of your mustache to your sideburns. When it comes time to manicure the top half of your beard, you'll want to follow your natural contours rather than choosing an approximate stopping point like you did with your neckline. Use a pair of scissors to snip any scraggly or overly-long strands that have managed to escape your clippers. Tilt your head at different angles so you can more easily see hairs that are sticking out. Each part of your facial hair should be a uniform length. Gently tease out longer sections with a comb to make them easier to clip. It's perfectly acceptable to have a mustache or goatee that's longer than the rest of your beard, as long as these sections are a consistent length.