The burst fade

A shape, not a height

The four heights — low, mid, high and bald — answer the question "how far up?". Burst answers a different one: "what shape is the line?"

You pick one of each. A low burst and a high burst are both real haircuts and look nothing alike. This is why listing burst alongside the heights, as most articles do, leaves people unable to describe what they want.

The burst itself: instead of running level around your head, the shaved area fans out from behind the ear in a semicircle, like a sunrise. It reaches its highest point just above the ear and comes back down on both sides. The nape is not touched at all.

What happens at the back, which is the point

Every other fade takes the neckline down. A burst leaves it, and that one decision is what the whole cut is for.

Keeping weight at the back means the hair on top has somewhere to go. On a straight fade the volume stops dead at the crown and the silhouette falls off a cliff. On a burst it keeps running down the back of the head, so a mohawk shape, a set of curls or a grown-out top reads as one continuous mass rather than a lump sitting on a shaved head.

It is also why the burst is the fade you see on mullets. Whatever you think of those, the construction is sound: tight at the ear, long down the back, nothing fighting in between.

What it is good for

• Curls and coils left full on top. The best pairing there is. The curve of the fade echoes the curve of the curl, and the retained weight at the back stops the shape looking top-heavy.
• Faux hawks and mohawk shapes. A burst is what makes the centre strip read as a strip. A straight fade flattens the whole effect.
• Anyone growing the back out. You can keep the sides sharp for months without touching the length you are growing.
• Ears that stick out. Genuinely — the semicircle draws a curve around the ear rather than a horizontal line across it, and the eye follows the curve.

Where it is a poor fit: a short, flat top. With nothing happening above, a burst leaves an odd island of length at the back and no reason for it. Ask for a straight mid instead.

Burst or drop?

Both are curves rather than straight lines, which is why they get confused. They curve in opposite directions and do opposite jobs.

If what you actually want is a tidy neck, you want a drop. If you want the back to keep its weight, you want this.

What to say

Say "burst fade" and then settle three things, because this is a shape with more variables than a straight line:

1. How high the burst goes above the ear. Point at it.
2. Where it stops at the back. "Leave the nape" is the usual answer and the one that makes it a burst at all.
3. Whether the top connects. Blended into the length, or left with a visible step — both are done, and they are different haircuts.

Bring a photograph of the back of someone's head for this one. The burst is nearly invisible from the front, which means a front-on reference tells your barber almost nothing about the cut you are asking for.

What it costs

Priced as fade work rather than as a separate service by most shops.

Upkeep follows the height you chose, not the shape: a low burst goes three to four weeks, a high one a fortnight.