Hair grows about half an inch a month, which sounds like nothing until you remember that a fade is built on differences of an eighth of an inch. How often you need cutting has almost nothing to do with how fast your hair grows and everything to do with how tight the cut was.
By cut
| Cut | Back in the chair |
|---|---|
| Skin fade | 2–3 weeks |
| Taper or shorter scissor cut | 4–5 weeks |
| Longer scissor cut | 6–8 weeks |
| Growing it out | 8–12 weeks, for shape only |
| Kids | 6–8 weeks |
| Beard shape | 2–4 weeks |
The pattern is simple: the shorter it was, the faster it goes wrong. A skin fade is the shortest-lived cut there is because the bald section is the first thing to grow, and at three weeks the blend it was built on has stopped being a blend. A longer cut has nowhere obvious to go wrong, so it drifts rather than breaks.
How to tell without counting weeks
Three signs, in the order they usually show up:
- The neckline goes fuzzy. Always first. It is also the one other people see when you are walking away.
- The sideburns stop being level. They never grow evenly. Once you can see it in the mirror, it has been visible to everyone else for a week.
- It stops sitting the way it did. When you have to do something to your hair in the morning that you were not doing a fortnight ago, the cut has grown past its shape.
Growing it out
If you are growing your hair, do not stop getting it cut. Hair does not grow evenly — the sides and the crown outpace the top, and left alone for four months you get the shape that makes people give up in month five.
What you want instead is a cut every eight to ten weeks that takes almost nothing off the length and just keeps the proportions right. Say “I am growing it out, shape only, do not take the length” and any barber will know exactly what you mean.
Stretching the gap
A line-up at the halfway point cleans the edges for a fraction of the price of a cut. It is genuinely the best value on a price list if you use it right — at week two of a three-week fade cycle, or the day before something you want to look tidy for.
What it will not do is rebuild a grown-out fade. Past about three weeks the blend needs cutting again, and a line-up will leave you sharp at the front and soft everywhere else.
Winter in Sudbury
One local note. From November through March a toque is on your head for most of the daylight hours, and hair that is flattened for eight hours a day behaves differently — it looks greasier faster and it loses whatever shape it had by mid-morning. A slightly shorter cut with more texture through the top survives a hat far better than a longer style that relies on sitting where you put it.