Beauty School'd Series | 101. How To Wash Your Makeup Brushes

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Hey babes! Before we jump into this post, I just wanted to share that I'm so excited to be starting a new series called "Beauty School'd" where every Wednesday, I'll be heading back to the basics and will share my tips and tricks for everything beauty! I hope you guys enjoy this series!

Okay. Show of hands. How many of us wash our makeup brushes? It's cool. We can be honest. It's a safe place here. But seriously. If you aren't washing your brushes, babe, get on it!

If you Google it, there are numerous sites that will tell you you should be washing your brushes and sponges at least once a week, another will say twice a month. It's kind of all over the place and think  it honestly depends on how often you use your brushes. Bobbi Brown says that eye brushes should be washed twice a month, while any other brush can be once a month. Personally, I wash mine every two weeks!

While washing your brushes isn't complex, I'll break it down into different sections, so everything isn't so jumbled together. Let's do this!

Washing.

Grab all your dirty brushes (and sponges) and head on over to the sink! 

• Start by getting your water warm to hot and then gently wet your brush. I wash my brushes one at a time, but I'm sure you can do a few at a time if you're in a rush. Tip: Always keep your brushes pointing bristles down. If they are wet and held bristles up, the water will seep into the glue holding the brush together and will cause shedding.

• There's two ways to actually soap them up and wash them: 1. Take some water into the palm of your hand, plop a little soap and then swish your brush around in your hand. Rinse and move onto the next one. I like this method but prefer the second one. 2. Buy a "brush exfoliating board/mitten". You can find silicone ones super cheap at TJ Maxx or you can try my personal favorite, The Brush Board ($28). To use the board, simply wet the board (each section pools a little water in it for the best lather), add some soap directly onto each board section and swish your brushes around until they're clean and you can the product has been removed. The board has six different textured sections to use to make sure all the product is gone. I feel like this removes all the gunk better than just your palm! Fave soaps to use? A Dove Bar or Dr. Bronners Pure Castile Liquid Soap!

• To wash your Beauty Blenders and sponges, get your sponges wet (well, duh)! I pour the soap directly onto the sponge and then massage the product out (as you can see above). Keep squeezing until all the product is removed and your sponge has a "squeaky clean" feel to it!

Drying.

• How you dry your brushes is very important! Like previously said, you don't want to dry them improperly and have all that water soaking into the bristles and loosening up the glue. I have two methods I use when drying my brushes. The first is take a large towel and rolling about 3/4 of it, with a little flap hanging out so it creates a slope. Then I lay my brushes out, bristles pointing down and leave them to dry overnight. 

• My second method is with The Brush Bar ($38) which is an awesome way to keep your brushes drying in the best way possible. The Brush Bar has ten different sizes prongs to hold brushes of all different sizes. I like to use The Brush Bar and my towel-rolling trick because I have a bunch of brushes and unfortunately, they don't all fit into The Brush Bar. Kind of the downside to it but what can you do? Both are great ways to dry your brushes!

Sanitizing.

Sanitizing isn't mandatory but is the best way to make sure your brushes are getting the best cleaning possible.

• First things first, grab some cotton balls, soak them in isopropyl alcohol and get to cleaning your brush holders. This is something I used to never do but it totally makes sense to. All that bacteria, makeup gunk and whatnot is bound to brush up against the holders, so make sure to clean them out.

• Onto your brushes, I like to pour the alcohol into a mini-spray bottle and just quickly spritz each of my brushes but you can just as easily pour the alcohol into a small bowl and dip your brushes as well.

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(I also added a couple of quick sanitizing sprays that are great to keep either home or in your bag!)

How often do you clean your makeup brushes?

* The Brush Bar was sent for consideration and I ended up falling in love with it!

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