Shaving for Your Skin Type

Your face is not a uniform surface, and treating it as one is why you bleed.

The skin on your cheeks differs from the skin on your neck, which differs again from that patch beneath your nose where the grain shifts direction as though placed there by a hostile cartographer. Some areas are oily, some are dry, and some, by some perversity of design, contrive to be both at once. A man who drags a blade at the same angle across the entirety of his face, expecting a civilised result, has confused optimism with method; the two have never met socially, and they are not about to begin on your account.

Before we proceed further, let us address the instrument itself. If you are shaving with a cartridge razor (that plastic contraption with four or five blades stacked together like a tiny, overpriced picket fence), you have been misled by decades of marketing into believing that more blades produce a closer shave. They do not. What they produce is more passes over the same skin, more irritation, and a recurring expense that borders on extortion. The proper instrument for shaving is a double-edge safety razor, a single blade held at the correct angle by a weighted handle that does most of the thinking for you, provided you let it. The initial cost is modest; the replacement blades are pennies. The shave, once you have spent a week learning the angle, is superior to anything a cartridge has ever delivered, and the ritual of loading a fresh blade, of feeling the satisfying click and the balanced heft in your hand, transforms the act from a chore into something approaching a discipline.

If your skin is oily, you will find that a proper pre-shave wash with warm water and a gentle cleanser does more than any shaving product to prepare the surface. The oil on your skin is not lubricant; it is an obstacle. Remove it first, then build your lather.

And the lather itself demands a word, because what most men call “lather” is nothing of the sort. That aerosol foam, which emerges from a pressurised tin with the consistency of whipped topping, contains propellants and chemicals that dry the skin and provide no real cushion or slickness for the blade to glide upon. It belongs nowhere near a face. A proper lather is built with a brush (badger hair being traditional, though good synthetic brushes now exist that would satisfy all but the most exacting purist) and a quality shaving soap or cream, worked in a bowl or directly on the face until it achieves that dense, glossy consistency, slick to the touch, that tells you the blade will travel as it should. The difference, once you have experienced it, is not subtle; it is the difference between dragging a blade across sandpaper and guiding it across silk, and you will wonder, with some irritation, why no one told you sooner.

If your skin is dry, the opposite approach applies. You need moisture, and you need it before the blade arrives. A hot towel held to the face for thirty seconds is not an affectation; it is preparation, softening the whiskers and opening the pores in a manner that no amount of aerosol foam has ever accomplished. Follow the towel with your brush-built lather, rich with glycerin, and you will find the razor passes with a smoothness that repays the extra minute of preparation tenfold.

For sensitive skin, the direction of the grain is not optional. Shave with the grain on the first pass, letting the weight of the safety razor do the work rather than pressing down, which is the cardinal error of the beginner. If you require a closer result, re-lather (for the lather is not a luxury to be rationed, and the brush makes building a second application the work of moments) and shave across the grain. Against the grain is for men who enjoy ingrown hairs and the appearance of having been recently stung by something vindictive.

Rinse with cold water when you are finished. Apply a balm, not an aftershave that contains alcohol, which is a punishment disguised as a product. Your skin has just had a blade drawn across it with deliberate care; the appropriate response is to soothe it, not to set it alight. And as you rinse your razor, dry it, and set it down beside your brush and soap, you may find, as better men before you have found, that the morning shave has become something you look forward to rather than something you endure. That quiet satisfaction, the face in the mirror smooth and unmarked, the tools cleaned and ready for tomorrow, is not mere vanity. It is the particular pleasure of a thing done properly, with the proper instruments, by a man who has taken the trouble to learn.