How often should men get a haircut?

Hair grows roughly a centimetre a month. Whether that centimetre matters in a fortnight or in two months depends on how much of your haircut relies on a precise line. The shorter and sharper the cut, the sooner it stops looking like the cut you paid for.

The honest schedule, by style

Why fades need it so often

On a fade, the gradient is the haircut. A centimetre of growth does not shorten it — it destroys the blend, because the shortest section grows proportionally the most. This is why a fade looks sharp for ten days and untidy by week four, while a longer cut simply looks slightly longer.

If a three-weekly appointment does not fit your life, the useful move is not to stretch the fade. It is to ask for a cut that degrades gracefully — a taper rather than a skin fade holds its shape roughly twice as long.

Growing it out still needs cuts

The most common and most expensive mistake in men's hair is stopping haircuts entirely while growing something out. The ends split, the sides flare outwards, the whole thing loses its outline, and the awkward middle stage lasts considerably longer than it needed to.

What to ask for instead: keep the length, clean the shape. A stylist can remove weight from the sides, keep the perimeter tidy and take almost nothing off the top. You leave looking like you did when you walked in, which is the point, and you arrive at the length you wanted months sooner.

How to tell yours is due

• Styling takes noticeably longer than it did a fortnight ago
• The sides have started to flare outwards instead of sitting flat
• Your fringe is in your eyes when it did not used to be
• Product stops holding — usually a weight problem, not a product problem
• The back of your neck no longer has a clean line

What a year actually costs

Worth seeing plainly, because choosing a haircut is also choosing an annual budget, and almost nobody does that maths before committing to a fade.

One thing that changes the interval

If what actually sends you back to the salon is the sides flaring rather than the length, a down perm addresses the cause directly. It flattens the lift for two to three months, which for a lot of men turns a four-week cycle into a six or seven-week one. At $50 alongside a cut, it frequently pays for itself within the year.