Goatee and the chin you actually have

A goatee points. It keeps hair on the chin and usually the mustache, and it takes the cheeks off. The empty cheek is what makes the chin the subject. If your chin is small, the point can make it look smaller, a little arrow under a feature you were hoping to broaden. If the chin is strong, the goatee underlines it. Hair will not lend you a different bone. Look in profile, with a few days of growth, before you commit to living with the arrow.

The width should agree with the mouth. It should not run out to the corners of the jaw unless you are growing a full beard and calling it a goatee. Width that reaches the jaw with bare cheeks reads as a beard that forgot its sides. Stay near the width of the lips, or a little wider if the chin itself is wide. The bottom can be round or slightly squared to the chin bone. A long point, unless you asked for it, is usually the center left long while the corners were trimmed. Say round if you mean round. Say point only if you have looked at the point on your own chin and still want it.

Connect the goatee to the mustache, or leave a gap on purpose. An almost-connection, a few hairs in the corner of the mouth and then skin, looks unfinished every time you talk. The corner is the design. If that corner is patchy, a forced connection will show the patch. A deliberate gap, clean and even on both sides, is more honest and easier to keep. Look at your growth there in a mirror, not in a photo of a different face, before you say connected. The chair can tell you the corner is thin. It cannot invent the hair.

The cheeks are now the style. That skin is what people see first, and razor bumps there are louder than bumps hidden inside a full beard. Shave with the grain. One pass is the plan. Do not buff the cheek to glass if your skin has already objected to that. If you bump every time the cheek is bald, a goatee may be the wrong honest shape, because the cheek is supposed to be the negative space. A shadow left on the cheek to spare the bumps starts to look like a beard you did not finish. In that case a short beard, even from ear to ear, may suit the skin better. Say so instead of forcing a bald cheek you will regret on Thursday.

Keep the hanging length off the neck. A goatee that drips onto the throat is a small patch that got lost, or a beard growing downward because the bottom was never cut. The hair can cover the chin bone. It should not hang a finger below it unless that length was the request. Feel the bone. Cut to it, or just under it, and take the throat hair off using the same neck rule as any other beard: where the jaw turns into the neck, not down on the Adam's apple. A goatee with a scarf under it stops being a goatee from the side.

A small island of hair under the lip, and nothing else, is a different choice. Do not let a goatee shrink into that island because you kept narrowing the sides at home. If you want only the little patch, say so by name. If you want the chin, keep the width you agreed to. Home trims that "clean the edge" are how goatees diet themselves into a tuft. Each pass feels like maintenance. Together they are a redesign you did not book.

At home, clean the cheek on a schedule, with the grain, and stop at the border. Do not take a little more each week to make it crisper. That is how the width walks inward. Do not scissor the bottom into a point while you lean over the sink. If the shape has wandered, round it back toward the width of the mouth, lightly, or book. The corner, if you chose a connection, is the piece to leave alone. Nicking it open is the mistake you cannot pencil shut. Grow it. Do not chase it shorter to hide the nick.

Say the shape in one breath so it cannot be confused with a short beard or a circle. Goatee. Width of the mouth. Connected, or a gap. Cheeks off, with the grain, and I bump or I do not. Bottom round, off the neck. Mustache off the lip. Then look in profile and from the front with your mouth relaxed. If the chin looks smaller than it did when you sat down, the goatee is too narrow or too pointed. Say so before you leave. Growing the width back takes longer than the visit, and a small chin with an arrow under it is a long month to wear a decision you can still undo in the chair.