Growing out a buzz cut takes roughly six months to reach a length you can style and about a year for proper weight on top. The bad part is not all six months. It is weeks eight to sixteen, and it is caused by the sides of your head rather than the top. Keep the sides and the neckline cut while the top is left completely alone, and most men get through it without ever having an awkward stage.
That last part is the whole trick, and it is the opposite of what nearly everyone does, which is leave the entire head alone and hope.
Why the awkward stage happens
Hair grows at about the same rate everywhere on your head, roughly a centimetre a month, a bit quicker on some men. That sounds like a neutral fact. It is not, because the same centimetre does very different things depending on where it lands.
On top, hair sitting at two or three centimetres has enough length to lift off the scalp and not enough weight to lie back down. So it stands up, and it stands up differently every morning.
On the sides, that same centimetre grows outwards instead of downwards, because the hair above your ear leaves the head at close to a right angle. Eight weeks in, your sides are wider than they were and your top is taller than it was, and your head has gone from an egg to a box.
Then the back. A buzz has no neckline worth the name, because at 6mm there is nothing to line up. At three centimetres there is, and if nobody has been near it, it is a small fringe growing down your neck.
Those three things arrive together, because they all started from the same guard number on the same day. That is the month three head men come in and apologise for. Nothing has gone wrong with your hair.
Growing out a buzz cut, month by month
This assumes you started at a grade two, about 6mm, which is where most buzzes sit. Shift it a fortnight earlier if you began at a one and later if you were at a four. If you are not sure where you started, what each guard actually leaves has the millimetres.
Weeks 1 to 4, about 1.5cm. Still reads as a haircut. It has softened, the colour has come back up, and there is nothing to do except the neck.
Weeks 4 to 8, about 3cm. The first change you will not enjoy. The top has started standing up and no product helps yet, because there is not enough hair for anything to hold.
Weeks 8 to 16, about 4 to 5cm. The stretch everyone means by the awkward stage. Sides out, back growing into the collar, and you are seeing your own crown for the first time since you buzzed it. A strong swirl or a double crown is completely invisible at 6mm and extremely visible at four centimetres, which is why this is the point men decide their hair is growing wrong. It was always doing that. You just could not see it.
Months 4 to 6, about 6 to 7cm. It turns the corner. There is finally enough weight for the top to fall rather than stand, it will take clay, and it can be cut into a shape rather than just held steady.
Months 6 to 12, 8cm and up. Ordinary haircut territory. From here it is a decision about what you want rather than a question of waiting.
The cuts to book on the way through
Growing out is not the same as leaving it alone. Three or four appointments over six months, and in every one of them the top is off limits.
Weeks 4 to 12, sides and neck only. This is the appointment that does the actual work. Sides taken back down, around the ears cleaned up, neckline squared or left natural, top untouched. Our Skin Fade, Sides Only is £16 for half an hour and it exists for this exact situation: every bit of the length on top left alone, everything underneath it sharpened. If a skin fade is more contrast than you want against a short top, ask for a one or a two on the sides instead and it will grow back in less abruptly.
Months 3 to 5, a French crop if you want a shape rather than a holding pattern. At four or five centimetres the top is long enough to be cut forward into a short blunt fringe, which is the French crop. It turns the most difficult length on the calendar into a cut men ask for deliberately, and it buys another two months of growing without looking like you are growing anything.
Month 6, the first proper haircut. Now the top gets touched, lightly. A buzz cuts every hair on your head to the same length, so as it grows the ends all arrive at the perimeter together and the shape sits heavy and blunt at the edges. Twenty minutes of point cutting takes that off and the whole thing starts moving properly.
What makes it worse
Buzzing it again in month two. Completely understandable and it costs you everything you have banked. If you are close to caving, book the sides instead. It scratches the same itch without resetting the clock.
Waiting for the sides to catch up. They cannot. Everything is growing at the same rate, so leaving the sides alone keeps the gap exactly where it is while your whole head gets bigger.
Heavy product too early. Pomade or wax on three centimetres of hair drags it flat against the scalp and shows the skin through it, which is the thing you were trying to get away from.
Thinning shears. Somebody will suggest taking the bulk out around the four centimetre mark. Do not let them. Hair that short has nothing to fall back into once it has been thinned, so it separates instead of settling.
Your hair type moves the dates
Curly and afro-textured hair barely has an awkward stage, because it grows up and out and holds a recognisable shape from about two centimetres. What it has instead is density. The same growth that reads as fluff on straight hair reads as volume on curls, so the sides need doing more often through the middle of the grow-out, not less.
Fine straight hair is the hardest of the lot. At three to four centimetres it has no grip, it will not stay where you put it and it shows scalp under a bright light. This is the hair type that most needs the sides and neck appointment kept to schedule, and the one where a taper beats a skin fade, because there is not enough on top yet to carry that much contrast.
Thick coarse hair stands up hardest of anyone at month two and then behaves itself from month four onwards, once there is real weight in it.
Say this when you sit down: I am growing the top out, do not touch it, take the sides down to a one and square the neck off. That is the entire instruction, and any barber here will do exactly that and then stop. Book the half hour or take whichever of the six chairs is free. The men who come out the other side of this without a bad month are not the ones with better hair than you. They are the ones who kept turning up while the top was doing nothing.
