Your mustache and beard sit, literally, beneath your nose all day. Unless something is going terribly wrong, you will be so used to the smells coming off of your beard that you won’t even notice when you stink. The people around you will notice, but may be too embarrassed to say anything.

Here are 10 things you can do to reclaim the place of honor that your beard deserves.

1) Ask Someone Close To You to Be Honest

You know when you tell someone you love to be honest with you, but you are hoping they will continue to lie to you so you don’t have to deal with the problem? You have probably done this with your beard. You’re sure its not itchy? You really like it? Or maybe you never even thought about it. You need to frame the conversation as a positive. It is not, does my beard smell? Instead, let your loved know that you are planning on upping your beard care game and want to get a second opinion on where you stand now. Ask them what your beard smells like to them.

2) Do an Inventory of Your Hair and Skin Care Routine

What products are you using on your hair, beard, face, and body?

If you are using a dedicated face wash, check the ingredients. We like the way that our skin reacts to the Cetaphil gentle skin cleanser and Cetaphil extra gentle daily scrub, but recognize that some of the ingredients may be unhealthy to individuals and the environment. There are some alternatives focused on achieving similar results without the parabens, such as this moisturizing bar from Aveeno for dry skin.

3) Assess the Health of Your Skin on Your Scalp, Face, Neck, Back, and Hands

You are likely going to need some help here, although you can do a lot with a wall mirror and a hand-held mirror and some patience. There are a few different goals for getting a better understanding of the health of your skin.

The first is to make sure that you don’t have a serious problem that requires medical attention. The American Cancer Society has a quick guide to doing a skin self-exam. If you have a partner, they will be able to help you exam harder to see areas, including your scalp. To identify potentially cancerous growths, you should be looking for:

• A new, expanding, or changing growth, spot, or bump on the skin

• A sore that bleeds and/or doesn’t heal after several weeks

• A rough or scaly red patch, which might crust or bleed

• A wart-like growth

• A mole (or other spot on the skin) that’s new or changing in size, shape, or color

• A mole with an odd shape, irregular borders, or areas of different colors

This is the time when taking care of your beard could save your life.

Deal with your Beard-Druff

You will also want to evaluate other less serious, but still bothersome skin problems. The most likely problem is dandruff, otherwise known as seborrheic (seb-o-REE-ik) dermatitis. You will likely see skin flakes on your scalp, eyebrows, beard, or mustache. You could also have patches of greasy skin with flaky white or yellow scales. Red or itchy skin is a very common sign.

You can usually resolve mild or moderate cases with over-the-counter treatments. The Mayo Clinic includes this list of products:

• Pyrithione zinc (Dermazinc, Head & Shoulders)

• Selenium sulfide (Selsun Blue)

• Ketoconazole (Nizoral A-D)

• Tar (Neutrogena T/Gel, DHS Tar)

• Salicylic acid (Neutrogena T/Sal)

Use the products regularly until symptoms subside, at which point you can use these 1-3 times per week. You can use these products with gentle scrubbing on your face, facial hair, neck and chest. For beards, the Mayo Clinic suggests 1 percent ketoconazole daily until your symptoms improve.

The cause of seborrheic dermatitis (dandruff) is not known, but is theorized to be either a fungal infection in your skin oil or an autoimmune disorder.

You may also have acne with a beard that you didn’t have when you were shaving. The mix of oil, skin cells that aren’t being exfoliated as often, and increased touching of the face is a potent cause of acne. If you do notice pimples under your beard, you can use over-the-counter products containing salicylic acid, benzoyl peroxide or retinoids.

Is your skin dry, oily, somewhere in between? Is your skin sensitive to chemicals in soaps and and other products? Do you have any allergies to natural products?

4) See A Doctor if You Can

Doing a self-exam regularly is critical to your help. Getting a close examination from a physician of any concerning findings or just for reassurance can go a long way. If you have tried over-the-counter treatments for dandruff or other irritations but still have a problem, prescription treatments may help. If you go to the doctor without having first tried the over-the-counter treatments, they will likely suggest that you try those lower-risk treatments first.

5) Wash Your Hands and Stop Touching Your Face (Good Luck)

You touch a surface that is contaminated (pretty much everything) and then touch your face and your beard, introducing bacteria and fungal infections. This won’t result in an established infection every time, but it opens the door to acne and fungal infections. The advice is to wash your hands frequently and stop touching your beard and face. This makes a lot of sense during the COVID-19 pandemic, and may lead to longer-term changes in behavior.

One of the joys of having a beard is touching it. So, perhaps it makes sense to say that one should wash their hands before touching their beard.

6) Get Your Beard Trimmed Professionally

As part of your new beard you, go to a barbershop that specializes in beard care. They will get you looking good and encourage you to adopt a daily beard care regimen. Who cares if your beard is stinky if it’s scraggly, right?

7) Wash Your Beard Twice a Day

You sweat and rub your face in your pillow, which has its own bacterial and fungal environment. If you shower in the morning, you can wash your beard with the same shampoo that you use on your head. If you are managing dandruff, use that shampoo on your beard or use Ketoconazole (Nizoral A-D) specifically for your beard. Once the dandruff is under control, you may use this 1-3 times per week and use a gentler cleansing shampoo. Some beard care blogs recommend using conditioner as well. The only concern is that you don’t want to add too many moisturizers to your face, particularly if you are adding beard oils. You may think about the second wash when you get home for the day. Your beard picks up all kinds of smells (think tobacco smoke) and contaminants in your environment. One of the things we love about hotels is all of the little towels to use for a face refresher. You can actually buy these little towels and enjoy a warm towel wash with a gentle cleanser at home every day.

8) Exfoliate

Many stinky beard problems, along with acne, come from a mixture of oil, sweat, dead skin, and introduced bacteria or fungi. You manage a lot of these issues with keeping your hands clean and washing your beard regularly. You will remove some dead skin with regular washing, but it is particularly important to focus on exfoliation with a beard because you aren’t getting the exfoliation from a razor or easier access to the shaved skin. You will want to calibrate the frequency of your exfoliation. Once a week is a good starting point. If you use these products too frequently, you will dry out and irritate your skin. The Brickell Renewing Face Scrub tops a lot of lists for the cleansing effect of the pumice stone combined with jojoba and aloe vera.

9) Comb Out Your Beard After Each Wash

Combing reduces stinkiness in two different ways. First, it gets stuff, food bits or dead skin, out of your beard. Second, it reduces ingrown hairs by training your hair to grow away from the skin over the long term. Look into getting a special beard comb suited to your hair type.

10) Fine, You Get to Use Beard Oil

Adding moisture to your skin and beard hair can be a good way to keep your beard healthy, soft, and happy. It can also be a way to get oily skin that clogs your pores and leads to more problems than it is worth. You can also irritate your skin with beard oil additives, even, or perhaps especially, if they are essential oils. This Leven Rose Fragrance Free Beard Oil is a good choice. Try to avoid any fragrances in as many products you use on your beard as possible so that you can narrow down any sources of irritation.

You could make your own blend. Once you have a stable beard care routine you could very carefully add a single essential oil at a time at very low levels and evaluate for irritation. You could apply to the inside of your arm near your wrist over a few days at a concentration of <1% to see if you are particularly sensitive to a given essential oil. You don’t want the total concentration of essential oils to be above 3% of the total weight of the solution. Check out our Complete Guide to Making Your Own Perfume for tips on scales, bottles, and other supplies. Avoid any oil that has a phototoxicity warning as your face is exposed to sun more than most parts of the body. Exclude citrus oils as an easy first step to reducing phototoxicity, but there are other oils that pose a phototoxicity or safety risk. Keeping the concentration of each oil below 1% is one way to reduce your risk, although some oils, such as rose, can only be used at <0.6% on the skin due to levels of methyleugenol.

Calendula is a good first addition as it has been used for centuries to treat skin irritation. It has a warm, herbaceous, tea/hay/tobacco scent that would be a good base scent. German Blue Chamomile Essential Oil is another great choice. It has a similar herbaceous, hay character, but with a sweet, medicinal, fruity top note that mellows into a tobacco-like base. Check out our Top 10 Chamomile Perfumes. It is used widely in facial skincare preparations for its anti-inflammatory properties. Vetiver is a great scent on its own and may have benefits to skin health. While Calendula and Chamomile will smell more medicinal, adding in some vetiver will turn this into a blend you look forward to using. Patchouli is another complex scent that can be added in low levels for its aroma as well as its potential skin benefits.