How To Trim Your Stomach Hair For The Perfect Happy Trail

It’s just one of those questions we often forget needs answering. We just sort of assume we can “wing it” and hope for the best.

This just isn’t true.

A great way to trim your happy trail and get a natural-looking result is by trimming stomach hair in a graded fashion. In other words, the hairs on your stomach gradually increase in length the closer you get to the happy trail from the sides. This way the happy trail doesn’t look too artificial as you still have a small amount of shorter, well-groomed hair surrounding it. Finish off by trimming down the actual happy trail itself. Not too short and not too long. Natural yet neat and well-groomed.

It’s a fantastic technique that unfortunately no one teaches you until you start desperately searching for it online.

Now what you should use for this trim is a trimmer with enough size guards (Amazon Link) to allow you to get that nice, graded appearance. The size guards we’ll be using are 1mm, 3mm, and 9mm.

What’s A Happy Trail

For those of you that don’t know, before we dive headfirst into this method I’d like to give a quick description of what the happy trail actually is.

The happy trail is a narrow, vertical band of hair that extends from the pubic hair to the belly button. It’s a natural, subtle and attractive distribution of hair to have on the abdomen.

There is a variation of the happy trail where it actually extends further than the belly button all the way up to the lower edge of the chest. But in this tutorial, we are going to focus on the most common variation. I’ll go into the other one in a little more detail toward the end.

So, the happy trail may or may not be visible already depending on how much hair you have surrounding it.

The aim of this tutorial is to allow you to get that happy trail to pop while removing any excess around it – without making it look artificial.

How To Trim Your Stomach Hair For The Perfect Happy Trail

Here’s a general routine you could follow.

Step 1: Trim to the left and right of the happy trail

Now, the idea is to have a very natural-looking gradient of hair length as you go from the sides of your abdomen inwards to your happy trail.

It is usually a good idea to mark the outline of your desired happy trail with a white eyeliner pencil so that you know where to start trimming.

I’m going to call this “the white outline”. This just refers to what your happy trail will eventually be.

Pop on a 3mm size guard and trim around 2 – 3 cm to the left and right of your white outline and around 1cm above your white outline.  

As you get to the edge of the white outline (your happy trail), flick your wrist to get an even less abrupt border.

Doing this ensures that your happy trail doesn’t look out of place or unnatural, as the area immediately surrounding it has visible but shorter hairs. It really draws attention to the happy trail in a great way.

I usually prefer to trim with the grain (i.e in the direction of hair growth). It leaves varying lengths of hair which can look more natural.

However if after you do this you’d prefer less hair in this area or if you’d prefer hairs of more uniform length, consider going against the grain.

Step 2: Trim the remainder

So now what you should have is a white outline around your happy trail, surrounded by an area of 3mm length hairs extending 2-3 cm to the left and right and 1cm above.

Now it’s time to trim the remainder of your stomach hair extending from the lower abdomen to the lower edge of the chest.

To make this area look clean it’s best to use a shorter setting  – the 1mm adjustment we used for inside the belly button is fine.

Using this setting trim the areas of the stomach we haven’t trimmed yet. Again, go with the grain first and review the result. If you’re unhappy with it go against the grain afterward.

Be careful not to trim the areas we’ve already trimmed as that would ruin the graded appearance we’re trying to achieve.

Of course, leave the areas within the white outline alone as well.

Step 3: Trim and neaten up your happy trail

To trim the happy trail, use different size guards and gradually reduce the length from top to bottom for a smooth transition between the happy trail and lower area.

If this area is already trimmed to a certain length, trim the happy trail to the same length.

Step 4: Rinse, moisturize

Rinse off your stomach with lukewarm water and gently pat it dry with a soft towel. Be mindful of the fact that your abdomen in its current post-trimmed state is sensitive.

Use a moisturizer to provide some much-needed hydration.

A Happy Trail Variation

You may prefer it if your happy trail didn’t end at your navel and instead traveled all the way up to the edge of your chest.

This is fine. Some people do because they think it looks more natural.

If this is the case, just follow the same steps but just extend the white outline you’d like up to the lower edge of the chest.

But remember to still try and achieve that graded appearance by trimming 2-3 cm to the left and right using the 3mm size guard.

Then simply trim the remainder to the shorter length of 1-2mm.

There’s no reason why this can’t look good. It’s all about personal preference and may be something you could experiment with.

It’s all supposed to be fun at the end of the day, right?

Conclusion

It’s been an emotional journey. Hopefully, by now you know exactly how to trim your stomach hair for the perfect happy trail.

No big deal, right?

We’ve rubbed, trimmed, and patted our way to the perfect trail. Some people might wonder why we pay so much attention to the finer details.

The happy trail is a very aesthetically pleasing strip of hair that can really look phenomenal when sculpted well.

You may be asking – what’s the point? Why not just trim it all off?

The finer details do matter. It shows people you take grooming seriously and it says more about you than you might think at first.

I hope you found this valuable.