How Often Should Men Get a Haircut?

Every two to six weeks, and the cut decides which end of that you sit at. A skin fade wants the chair every fortnight. A short back and sides holds for four. A longer scissor cut can stretch to six before it loses its shape. If you only want one number, book every four weeks - that is where most cuts stop being the haircut you paid for and start being the grown-out version of it. How often you should get a haircut is really a question about what you had done last time, so here is the timetable we give men in the chair.

How often should men get a haircut, cut by cut

Skin fade. Two weeks. It is at its sharpest for about ten days, because bare skin grows back to stubble in three or four days and the bottom of the blend closes up. Three weeks is the outside edge. If a fortnightly visit is not realistic for you, do not fight it - we wrote up the difference between a skin fade and a taper, and the taper is your answer.

Taper fade. Three weeks to keep the line sharp, four before it has quietly become a different cut. Of the fades, the low taper grows out cleanest, which is why we point men towards it when they are honest about how often they will actually come back.

Crew cut. Three weeks. One guard all over grows out evenly, so it fails politely. It never looks a mess, it just slowly stops being a crew cut.

Short back and sides, or a standard haircut. Four weeks. The classic interval for the classic cuts, and the one to put in your calendar if you do nothing else.

Longer styles. Five to six weeks, provided the shape was cut with the grow-out in mind. A good scissor cut should look better in week two than week one and still work in week five. Past six weeks you are not wearing a style any more, you are wearing growth.

Thinning hair. Every three weeks, and shorter than you think you want it. Tidy and short reads fuller than long and struggling. Every time.

Why the short cuts go off faster

Hair grows at close to the same rate all over your head, around half an inch a month for most men. On six inches of length, a month's growth barely registers. On a grade one, it is the whole haircut again inside a fortnight.

That is the entire story of haircut frequency. The shorter the cut, the bigger the share of it that grows back each week, and the faster the shape disappears. Fades have it worst because the point of a fade is contrast, and growth eats contrast first.

It is also why nobody needs to feel guilty about a long gap on a longer cut. Six weeks between appointments on a scissor cut is not neglect. Six weeks on a skin fade is a different haircut.

The signs you have left it too long

• The neckline has gone soft and there is fuzz above your collar.
• Hair is sitting on the tops of your ears when it never used to touch them.
• Thick hair has started growing out sideways instead of down, so the sides look wider than the top.
• The top needs product to do what it did on its own in week one.
• Your cowlick is back.

You cannot see the back of your own head. Everyone else can, and the back is always the first place a cut gives up.

Stretching the gap without wrecking the cut

If the diary or the budget says six weeks between visits, say so in the chair. There is an honest way to cut for it: a taper rather than skin, scissor work over hard clipper lines, and nothing carved in at the temple or the parting. A hard line looks its best for a week and then needs redoing, so it is the wrong choice for a man who comes in every other month.

Leave the neckline alone between visits. A good share of the necklines we straighten out started as a quick tidy at home with a beard trimmer, and once the natural line has been pushed too high, the only fix is waiting it out.

On cost, the maths is plainer than most men expect. A haircut with us is £15 and takes half an hour, so the four-week habit runs to about £195 a year. A crew cut at £10 every three weeks comes out near the same. The expensive habit is the £17 skin fade every fortnight - worth it if you love the cut, but go in knowing that is what you are signing up for. The price list has every option and what each one takes in time.

The easiest way to stay on schedule

The men who always look freshly cut are not lucky, and they are not spending their lives in barbershops. They book the next appointment before they leave the current one. Four weeks out, same day, same time, done. It takes ten seconds and it removes the drift - because the drift is never a decision, it is just three "I'll sort it next week"s in a row.

We are open 9:00am to 7:30pm Monday to Saturday and 10:00am to 6:30pm on Sunday, and with six chairs running, a booked slot means what it says. Book a chair, and if you are not sure what interval your cut wants, ask whoever cuts you. We can tell you to the week when it will stop behaving.