The Transition Point in a Haircut

The most difficult part of a tapered of fade haircut is making a smooth transition from the direct contact cutting that's on the lower sides and back to the over the comb cutting (or scissor cutting) that's used to do the upper sides and back. Almost always, smooth tapering suffers the most at the place where these 2 methods of cutting meet.


How do you deal with it? Drop down 1 or 2 blade sizes when you're doing the over the comb cutting. What blade you use over the comb will depend what blade you used on the direct contact cutting and also what comb you chose to use.


A wahl comb is thicker. It's almost - but not quite - 1/4" thick at the back bar. A flattop comb is only 1/8" thick. Also, a #1 blade will cut just a bit shorter than 1/8". Just from experience, hair does not feed well into a #2 blade (cutting the hair 1/4") for over the comb cutting.


The short cutting (1/8") will have the comb quite close to the scalp. With a longer cutting, you'll need to hold the comb (for clipper over comb cutting) a bit further away from the scalp.


Below is guide for which blade to use with which comb when doing your clipper over comb transition cutting.


Direct Contact Over Comb

Length of Hair l Hair Length with Flattop Comb l Hair Length with Wahl Comb
3/16" l 1/16" l 1/100"

1/4" l 1/8" l 3/16"

3/8" l 3/16" * l 1/8"

1/2" l 3/16" * l 3/16"*


* = the comb is held 1/8" away from the scalp

* = the comb is held 1/4" away from the scalp

* = the comb is held less than 1/4" away from the scalp