How to: Cleaning Your Makeup Brushes

Makeup brushes can be expensive but can allow you to apply your makeup or skincare products like the pros do. Unless you have duplicates of your brushes, you're going to want to wash them at least once every one to two weeks, with a spot clean in between. Even having duplicates of most of my brushes, I still wash mine fairly frequently because I have my favorites that I use all the time.  Cleaning your makeup brushes is important because it can prevent acne, breakouts and having your skin look like this:

My method for cleaning my makeup brushes is easy and inexpensive.

Step One: Proceed to your kitchen (or wherever you have adequate counter space) with all of your dirty brushes and a clean towel.

Step Two: Get two bowls. Fill one with about 1/4 inch of olive oil and the other with a small squirt of either baby shampoo or regular shampoo plus 1-2 drops of dishwashing detergent. This last ingredient is the one that you need to use the LEAST amount of because it can be drying. Add some warm water to the bowl with the soap, but don't fill the bowl FULL. You don't want the water to come above the ferrule (metal part) of the brush because this can cause rusting.

Step Three: Swirl a dirty brush in the olive oil for 20-30 seconds. The olive oil helps to break up the pigments from the makeup, the oil from your skin and the general crud on the brush. Then, swirl the brush in the soapy water. Following that, rinse the brush in lukewarm water until all the soap is gone. You may have to replace the olive oil and soapy water depending on how dirty your brushes are and how many you have to clean.

Step Four: Fold your towel lengthwise and place your brushes so that the end with the bristles hangs off the folded end of the towel. You don't want the water to run back into the ferrule, but you don't want the towel to absorb the water from the bristles either, because it's going to slow down the drying process. Drying can take 1-2 hours for synthetic brushes and up to 18 hours for a good quality brush.natural hair brush.

Spot cleaning your brushes can be done using a makeup cleansing cloth (Pond's Cleansing Wipes are great for this) or a spray specifically designed for this (M.A.C. makes one as does Bobbi Brown and several other cosmetic companies). Simply wipe the brush on the cleansing wipe or spray and wipe on a towel or kleenex.

Cheers!