15 Men Haircut Styles I Tried This Year
I spent a year moving between haircut families rather than between haircuts, which turned out to be the only way to learn anything. Switching names inside one family teaches you nothing, because the structure never changes.
In this article · 22
- What I Was Actually Testing
- How to Choose Yours
- The 15 I Tried
- 1. The Short Family — Buzz Cut
- 2. The Short Family — Crew Cut
- 3. The Short Family — Ivy League
- 4. The Classic Family — Side Part
- 5. The Classic Family — Scissor Taper
- 6. The Textured Family — Textured Crop
- 7. The Textured Family — Slide-Cut Top
- 8. The Modern Family — Blurry Taper
- 9. The Modern Family — Grown-Out Middle Part
- 10. The Business Family — Low Taper Office Cut
- 11. The Fade Family — Skin Fade
- 12. The Fade Family — Low Taper
- 13. The Trend Family — Two-Block
- 14. Switching to Matte Product
- 15. Going Back to the Textured Crop
- Styling and Upkeep
- Mistakes to Avoid
- FAQ
- Final Thoughts
I stopped changing haircuts a year ago and started changing families instead, mostly because a decade of small changes had taught me nothing.
Switching names inside one family teaches you nothing. A crew cut and an ivy league are the same structure at two lengths, and moving between them changes almost nothing about how the hair behaves.
Switching families changes everything at once. The technique, the product and the upkeep interval all move together, which is what makes the difference visible.
What I Was Actually Testing
The technique the family requires. Clipper work, scissor graduation or interior texturing.
The product it demands. Grip, weight or nothing at all.
The interval it survives. Two weeks, four weeks or eight.
Whether it fought my texture. The one variable that overruled every other finding.
How to Choose Yours
Give each family two cuts. One tells you about a barber, two tell you about a structure.
Change the product with the family. Keeping the same tub is how a fair test gets ruined.
Write down the interval that worked. It is the finding you will actually use.
Start with the family that fits your texture. Everything else is downstream of it.
The 15 I Tried
1. The Short Family — Buzz Cut
Two weeks of not thinking about my hair at all. It also showed me my actual head shape, which no other cut on this list did, because at a #2 there is no length anywhere for a growth pattern or a flat spot to hide behind.
2. The Short Family — Crew Cut
The graduation puts the visible density at the front, where people look. It was the first cut all year I did not have to style at all, and it stayed the same at six in the evening as it had been at eight in the morning.
3. The Short Family — Ivy League
Barely different from the crew cut, which was the point. Two cuts inside one family produced almost identical mornings, and that was the finding that made me stop switching names and start switching structures.
4. The Classic Family — Side Part
Everything depends on the part being set damp, because hair fixes its direction as the water leaves it. Set dry, it was gone by eleven o'clock every time, and no amount of product held a line the roots had never been dried into.
5. The Classic Family — Scissor Taper
No clipper line anywhere, and it grew out more quietly than anything else I had all year. It is the family's real argument, because there was never an edge to move out of place as the sides lengthened.
6. The Textured Family — Textured Crop
The separation was cut in rather than styled on, so it was still there with no product. That was the first time I understood what texture meant technically, which is that the ends inside one section are at different lengths.
7. The Textured Family — Slide-Cut Top
Weight graded from root to tip rather than removed in one place. It needed three inches of length before the technique was even possible, since the blades have to travel down the section to do anything at all.
8. The Modern Family — Blurry Taper
No locatable start to the gradient at all. It cost more chair time and it was the only fade all year that never needed rescuing, because there was no line anywhere for growth to push out of place.
9. The Modern Family — Grown-Out Middle Part
Four months of growing for a shape I kept for six weeks. The awkward stretch in the middle is the real cost, and hair grows about half an inch a month whether you are enjoying it or not.
10. The Business Family — Low Taper Office Cut
The only cut I had that looked correct on the day before an appointment. That week-four test is the whole family in one sentence, and it is a far more useful filter than any list of office-appropriate shapes.
11. The Fade Family — Skin Fade
Eight days of it looking like the photograph, then four more of it looking like something else. It taught me that depth, not height, sets the schedule, because the regrowth against bare skin is what gives a fade away rather than where the gradient started.
12. The Fade Family — Low Taper
Same silhouette with a #1 left at the neckline, holding three to four weeks instead of one to two. It was the single most useful swap of the year, and from three metres away nobody could tell the difference.
13. The Trend Family — Two-Block
A step rather than a gradient, which behaves nothing like a fade as it grows. It softened into a layer by week six and I preferred it there.
14. Switching to Matte Product
Not a haircut, and the biggest visible change of the year. Shine groups the strands together and matte leaves them separated, which changes the read of any family.
15. Going Back to the Textured Crop
Where I stopped. It needed the least from me and had the fewest ways of going wrong, which turns out to be what I was looking for the whole time without ever having said it out loud.
Styling and Upkeep
Change product when you change family. Otherwise you are testing a tub rather than a cut.
Give each family two full cycles. One cut only shows you one barber's execution.
Record the interval that held. It is the finding you will use for years.
Photograph week one and week three. They are two different haircuts.
Stop when something needs nothing. That was the actual conclusion.
Mistakes to Avoid
Switching names instead of families. Nothing changes and you learn nothing.
Keeping the same product across families. It confounds the whole comparison.
Judging a family on one appointment. You are judging the barber instead.
Booking a depth you cannot maintain. Skin is fortnightly no matter who cuts it.
Fighting your texture. I lost most of a decade to this before the year started.
FAQ
Haircuts or families? Families — the cuts inside one behave almost identically.
How long before judging? Two full cycles, about two months.
Biggest surprise? How much of it was a product problem rather than a cut problem.
Final Thoughts
If you only do one thing differently, stop asking for a different haircut and start asking for a different structure. The word blend, the word taper and the word matte moved my hair further in a year than every named style I had asked for before them.
For the families themselves see men's haircut styles, and for the one I stopped on see the textured crop haircut. More in Men's Haircuts.
