For a lot of guys, growing a beard isn’t as simple as avoiding a razor and letting nature take its course. Stubble doesn’t always grow uniformly on the face, resulting in patchy facial hair instead of a stylish beard.

Or, you may have inherited genes that make any type of beard growth practically impossible.

But just as you can transplant your own hair to the top of your head to tackle a receding hairline, you can also try a beard implant if your facial hair follicles aren’t cooperating.

A doctor will first need to evaluate your skin and hair to make sure you’re a good candidate, and then you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the expense.

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What is a beard implant?

A beard transplant is just that: Hair is taken from one part of the body and transplanted to your jawline and wherever you want your beard to grow.

That sounds simple enough, but it’s a rather involved process. There are two main approaches a surgeon can take:

Follicular unit extraction (FUE). This approach is done by harvesting complete follicular units one at a time from the donor area. FUE is less painful, which may explain why it’s the more commonly performed procedure
Follicular unit transplantation (FUT). For this approach, a surgeon cuts a small strip of tissue from the back of the head and removes the hair follicles from that tissue.
A follicular unit is a small grouping of several hair follicles that may emerge through the skin through the same exit point.

Both procedures take anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 hair follicle grafts or more from the back of the head, usually level with your ears, or a little lower, and implant them on the face.

A graft is a hair follicle that’s transplanted.

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What’s the procedure like?

Here’s an overview of the steps involved in the procedure:

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Harvesting

Whether you’ve chosen to have a FUE or a FUT, your surgeon’s first step will be to shave the area on your head that’s being harvested.

This gives them a clearer view of the hair follicles. Before the harvesting begins, you’ll be given a local anesthetic, so you won’t feel the harvesting or the implantation.

Implantation
Once the follicles have been harvested from your head, the surgeon will inject a local anesthetic into the area of your face where the implants will be placed. Then, the surgeon will implant each follicle into your facial skin, shaping your new beard the way you and the doctor agreed on prior to surgery.

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Recovery

You’ll need a day to recover from the beard implant surgery. Tiny crusts may form around each newly implanted hair follicle, but these should flake off within a few days.

After about a week to 10 days, you should be able to start shaving normally and trimming your new beard.

A word of warning, however: Your new beard hairs may fall out after 2 or 3 weeks. This is normal, and new hair should grow in to take their place.