Sideburns: Shapes, Lengths and How to Keep Them Even

Short, medium or long: lengths, shapes and your face

Barbers measure sideburns against the ear. Short sideburns end at the top of the ear or just below it, medium ones reach the ear opening, and long ones run down to the earlobe or past it. Then you choose the shape. A square bottom edge, cut straight across, looks sharp and classic. A tapered sideburn gets shorter towards the bottom and fades into the skin, which suits fades and short clipper cuts. An angled edge slopes down towards the jaw and adds a touch of the 1970s. Thick hair at the temples grows a wide, bushy sideburn, and the barber can trim it back from the front edge so it stays off the cheekbone. Face shape helps you decide. On a round or square face, medium or long sideburns draw the eye down and make the face look longer. A long, narrow face looks better with short sideburns, since long ones stretch it further. Sparse hair in front of the ears suits short sideburns too, because a long sideburn with gaps looks unfinished. The haircut sets limits as well. A scissor cut with longer sides keeps natural sideburns at full density, and a skin fade takes them down to stubble or blends them out completely. If you can't decide, start with medium: a barber can shorten a sideburn in a minute, and the shaved skin below the old line takes weeks to grow back to the length of the rest. So mention your sideburn length at the start of the cut, before the barber picks up the clippers for the sides.

Trimming at home without one side ending up shorter

Home trimming goes wrong at the sideburns more than anywhere else, because you check one side with your head turned, then the other, and compare two different angles. Stand square to the mirror, keep your head level and judge both sides from the front. Take your glasses off, since the arms cover the exact spot you are trimming. The ear works for choosing a length, but many people have ears set at slightly different heights, so sideburns measured from each ear can come out uneven. Level them against your eyes or cheekbones instead: rest an index finger flat under each sideburn and check in the mirror that both fingers sit at the same height. Comb the hair down and trim the length with the same guard on both sides. For the bottom edge, take the guard off, hold the trimmer horizontally at the height you chose, rest the edge of the blade on the skin to mark the line, then clear the stubble below it. Work on dry hair, because wet hair lies flatter and looks longer. Take off a millimetre at a time and switch sides after each pass. If one side comes out higher, raise the other to match once and stop there; chasing the difference back and forth can move both sideburns up a centimetre in five minutes. Tidy the stray hairs at the back of each sideburn that grow towards the ear. If the sides still don't match after that, leave both alone and let the barber even them up at your next visit.

Sideburns with a beard, long sideburns and grey temples

With a beard, the sideburns join the haircut to the beard. If your sides are six millimetres and your beard is twelve, the barber grades the sideburns from one length to the other so no step shows in front of the ear. That's a good reason to book a haircut and beard trim together: one barber sets both lengths and the transition between them. Long sideburns need patience. Leave the length alone for about two months and keep only the edges clean: the line across the cheek and the stray hairs under the ear. Mutton chops, which widen along the jaw towards the corners of the mouth, also need a clean-shaven chin every day or two, or they turn into an untidy full beard. The style that gave sideburns their English name joins them to the moustache over a shaved chin. General Ambrose Burnside, a Union commander in the American Civil War, wore it; his surname first became burnsides, and the two halves later swapped places to give sideburns. Grey hair tends to show at the temples and sideburns first. If those first grey hairs bother you, we can blend them into the darker hair around them with grey camouflage, and shorter sideburns leave less grey on show. Between visits, tidy the bottom edge and the stray hairs yourself, and leave the blend into the beard to the barber.