Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described. Generally, the described techniques provide for efficiently determining when to transmit a beam report indicating a new beam for communicating with a base station after a current beam used for communications with the base station fails. In one example, after detecting beam failure, a user equipment (UE) may compare a quality of each candidate beam available for communicating with a base station to a beam identification threshold, and the UE may perform beam reporting based on the comparisons (e.g., refrain from transmitting a beam report if the quality of each of the candidate beams is lower than the beam identification threshold). In another example, after detecting beam failure, a UE may compare a quality of each candidate beam available for communicating with a base station to a beam detection threshold, and the UE may perform beam reporting based on the comparisons.