Back to basic: how to take care of make-up brushes

I recently posted 2 articles about must have brushes (face and eyes separately) but there is definitely more to be said. Once you buy brushes for your make-up application you need to know how to take care of them so they last you long time.

If you have acne-prone, sensitive skin or you work on other people, you should always clean your brushes after each use. If you quickly need some clean brushes (for ex. if you don’t have many brushes and you use them for several make-up applications at the same time), you can use alcohol cleanser. Spray the brush with it and use the paper tissue to wipe the colour off. It will dry within seconds and you can use the brush again.

Alcohol brush cleansers: Makeup Atelier Paris and Peggy Sage

It is not recommended to clean brushes only with alcohol cleanser they should be cleaned with special soap/cleanser that you can buy from companies that sell brushes or you can just use gentle shampoo (for ex. Johnsons&Johnsons Baby shampoo). The drying time is lot longer than with alcohol, approximately 5-8 hours. I clean my brushes with shampoos that didn’t do well with my hair, this way I don’t waste them totally.

As you can see on the picture I have lot of brushes. In fact I don’t like cleaning brushes so I have several sets of them to use and every 2 weeks I clean them all at once. I keep dirty brushes in the special drawer so that they don’t mix with clean ones.

How I clean my brushes:

1. I use rubber glove to protect my hand and it also cleans the brushes easier thanks to its scalloped texture. I bought mine in IKEA (at the kitchen department) for 3€, Sigma sells similar one for 35$, what a waste of money I say.

IKEA glove

2. I add shampoo to the glove and rub the brush on it till water becomes clean again.

3. After all my brushes are clean, I take a paper towel and squeeze extra moisture out of them.

4. I lay the brushes horizontally with bristles in the air and let them dry.

5. Once they are dry and if I’m not going to use them immediately, I put them in the brush guards. They not only protect them from the dust but also keep them in their original shape. You can buy these brush guards on Ebay (I bought set of 50 from user maaqii for 4,19$) or on Amazon.

I hope I gave you some ideas what should you do once you invest in brushes and you want to take good care of them. If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send me an email. I’m planning on posting little overview on companies that sell makeup brushes to give you an idea what and where to buy.