What Is a Line Up Haircut? Edges Explained

A line up is the hard edge we cut along the front of your hairline and down the temples, usually with trimmers and sometimes finished with a straight razor. Edge up means the same thing. Shape up normally means that same edge taken right round, neckline and ears included. It is the last few minutes of a haircut, it is not a separate item on our price list, and it is the part most men check first in the mirror.

What is a line up haircut, and is an edge up different?

No, and anyone charging you differently for the two is playing with words. Line up and edge up are the same job: taking off the fine, wispy hair that grows below your natural hairline, then squaring the corners so the front of your head reads as a deliberate shape instead of trailing away.

Shape up is the one that sometimes means more. Plenty of men use it for the front edge like the other two. Others mean the whole perimeter of the haircut, so the front, the temples, round the ears and the neckline at the back. If that is what you are after, say "all the way round" and nobody has to guess.

Ask for any of the three in our chairs and you will get the front and the temples. The ears and the neckline get done regardless, because a haircut is not finished without them.

What happens when you ask for one

The trimmers come out with no guard on, and they go on flat. Not dug in. The blade sits against the skin and travels along the line rather than into it, and that is the whole difference between an edge that grows out clean and an edge somebody has to chase next month.

We start at your heavier corner, because that is the one with enough hair to square honestly, and set the depth there. The other corner gets matched to it as closely as your hairline allows, which on most heads is close but not identical. Then the temple line comes down, straight, and stops where your sideburn begins.

The fluff below the line goes. The line itself stays where it grows.

That is the job, and it is about four minutes of a thirty minute appointment. If you want it sharper than trimmers can manage, a straight razor takes the edge level with the skin and it looks like it was drawn on with a ruler. It also looks like that for roughly four days.

Who a line up suits, and who should think twice

An edge looks best on hair that is dense right up to the front, because a line needs something solid to be the edge of. Thick hair and tight curls take it beautifully. The contrast between hair and skin does all the work and there is plenty of hair to make the contrast with.

Fine or straight hair is a harder sell. A hard line across a soft hairline reads as drawn on rather than cut, and the hair underneath grows back as pale stubble instead of proper hair, so the tidy fortnight you were expecting is more like a tidy week.

If your hairline is uneven, and everyone's is to some degree, think carefully before you ask for it dead straight. Squaring an uneven front means taking the low corner back to meet the high one. Do that twice and you are cutting a line across a forehead that has quietly moved on you. We wrote a whole guide on chasing the corner because we spend a fair bit of time undoing it.

Widow's peak? Leave it in. Cutting it out buys you a straight line for a week and an odd bare notch for the month after.

The trimmer, the razor and your skin

A trimmer leaves the hair a fraction above the skin. A razor takes it level with the skin, and some men's skin has strong opinions about that. Small itchy bumps along the temple or the nape two days later are the usual complaint, and they are the same thing men get on the neck after a close shave.

If that sounds familiar, the fix is easy. Trimmer only, no razor on the edges, and say so when you sit down rather than after. The line comes out a hair's breadth softer and your skin is not bothering you for the rest of the week. We would sooner do that than send you out with a perfect edge and a rash.

Anything past ordinary irritation, a patch that will not settle or skin that keeps breaking out in the same spot, is a GP or a pharmacist question rather than a barber one.

How often, and what it costs here

There is no line up on our price list. You can read the whole menu and you will not find one, because it is part of the haircut rather than an extra. A haircut is £15 and half an hour. A skin fade is £17 and forty minutes. A crew cut is £10. All three go out lined.

Beards work the same way. A beard trim is £11 for fifteen minutes and the cheek line and neckline are cut with the razor as part of it, not bolted on afterwards.

As for timing, a razored edge peaks at four or five days and is honest for a fortnight. A trimmed edge starts slightly softer and still looks deliberate at three weeks. Most men who come to us every three weeks for a fade get the trimmed version, because it is still there when they arrive rather than having disappeared a fortnight earlier. The full timetable by cut is in our guide to how often men should get a haircut.

What to ask for

The only decision that really matters is how straight you want it, and it is worth making that before the trimmers are on rather than after.

If you want it to look cut rather than drawn, ask us to follow the line you already have and take the loose hair off underneath it. Less dramatic when you stand up. Still a haircut in three weeks, which is the trade most men would take if anyone offered it to them.

If you want the sharp one, ask us to square it up and take the razor round the edges, and go in knowing what you are buying: four or five very good days, a fortnight of it quietly softening, then it wants doing again.

Two things are worth saying out loud whichever you pick. "Don't take my corners back" is what stops a hairline walking slowly up a forehead over a year of appointments. "Trimmer only" is what stops your skin arguing with you on Wednesday. Neither costs anything and both save a conversation with the mirror later.

If you are not sure which of those is you, that is what the first few minutes in the chair are for. We are looking at the front of your head from where we stand, which is a different view from the one you get in your bathroom, and we will say straight out if a hard edge is going to cost you more than it gives you. Book a chair and we will work it out together.