How to avoid Razor Bumps?

One of the many disadvantages of growing up away from my father in an age where the internet is still at it’s infancy, is that no one taught me how to properly shave. So now that I am a father myself, I want to make sure that I give out this important and overlooked instruction to my son. I have done my un-scientific research through painful trial and error, really “bloody” errors, and I intend to help my son avoid these mistakes.

My son is still too young, but I have already written down the steps for his future use, and I am posting it here as a reminder to other Dads, that it is our duty to help our son avoid Razor Bumps, and to achieve clean and perfect shaves. If you feel I missed something important about shaving, or that this post was enlightening, do hit the comments.

Perfect Shave Tips:

- Prepare your tools, make sure you have a clean, relatively new razor (non-electric), shaving cream and aftershave.
- Better to do the shaving after a nice, preferably warm bath. It helps soften up your beard or mustache.
- Next step is to feel your beard / mustache and know where the hair growth direction is. Typically for the mustache, the direction is from the nose towards the cheek. The common hair growth direction for the beard is from the mouth going down the neck.
- Visualize how you want the shave result to look, know if you need to avoid certain areas.
- Remember to use the razor along the direction of the handle when shaving, never swing your razor from side to side, as it will obviously bloody cut.
- Apply the shaving cream, then shave your facial hair going with the direction of hair growth.
- After the initial shaving, you can then do a perpendicular shave (i.e. when your first shave is from up to down, the next shave will be from side to side). Just remember NOT to go against the grain to avoid those pesky Razor Bumps. Repeat until preferred smoothness is achieved.
- After careful shaving, wash your face gently and finally apply the after shave (which might sting a little if you were not careful with shaving), it reduces the chances of infection on the cuts and bruises along the shaved area.

Hope my son will get less Razor bruises when it’s his turn to shave, and hope that this quick post will help other too.

Note: I am participating in a blogger campaign by Bucks2Blog which explains the link. However, the views and opinions are entirely my own, and I sincerely hope that with these quick information my son will get less Razor bruises when it’s his turn to shave.