Washing Makeup Brushes.
Washing my makeup brushes is one of those chores I dread, like getting ready for school on a Sunday night – I have quite a few makeup brushes so it always seems to take forever, especially if boyfriend isn’t around to help (step one: rope in your poor boyfriend/flatmate to help). I’m fond of really dense buffing brushes too, and they’re an absolute killer to clean, but I have a speedy routine in place that I’ve been doing for years so I guess I can’t really complain…
I’ve tried quite a lot of options for deep cleaning my brushes, which I try to do as often as possible – usually after every second use for most of my everyday brushes – but I always come back to the old favourite, Simple soap. As it’s quite delicate, it doesn’t ruin makeup brushes – I know this as my makeup brushes are still in new condition after years of use and regular washings. I tend to turn the tap on to warm, never hot as this apparently melts the glue, and then wet my brush and bar of soap.
Then, I really rub the bristles in the bar – this helps to really deep clean the brushes. The Sigma brushes are notoriously hard to clean, but they’re my favourites for applying makeup so I need to clean them all the time, and this method gets right in there! I just lather them up with lots of soap and rinse – if the white at the top of the bristles comes away clean and white, I keep rinsing and massaging water in to the bristles to flush out the soap. If not, I lather the brush up in the soap again, concentrating on any tell-tale orange areas until we’re good.
Once I think I’ve rinsed the brush enough, I give it a good squeeze to see if any soap is going to come out. I kind of stick my finger in the bristles a little to see if they feel soapy, and if not I just grab a clean towel and gently dry the brush. I try not to turn the brush up at any point during the washing and drying process, so no water runs in to the handle and ruins the brush.
I then reshape the brush and lay it down on another clean towel to dry.
With the eyeshadow and lip brushes etc. I don’t spend as much time doing this as they’re so much easier to clean than those damn Sigma brushes, but I still do the same method. It sounds like it would take ages, but it takes just minutes once you get the hang of it!
My brushes are always super fluffy and have lasted me years and years, so I know it’s a great method and I find that the soap doesn’t break me out – I know it sounds weird, but I’m sure when I’ve tried other soaps in the past, the perfume has lingered and caused my skin to react, so I’ll be sticking to the bars of Simple soap! Plus you can stockpile packs of four in Savers for a quid!
Have you tried a similar technique?
