Brush Cleaning Hacks

I'm sure you've all seen 100 tutorials by now, telling you the importance of cleaning your brushes and giving you a detailed how-to. They're right obviously. Cleaning your brushes is super important if you want to avoid zits, mold, and harmful bacteria. But today I wanted to share with you a few new tips that have worked really well for me, might make the whole ordeal a little bit easier for you.

1. You don't need a fancy expensive brush cleaner.
You know all of those blog posts that are like, "You can use Johnson's Baby Shampoo/Namebrand Showergel/Dove Shampoo/Face wash," to wash your brushes? Technically they're right, but they're also clever advertisements. It doesn't really matter what brand you use as long as it's not too harsh of a cleanser. Are some cleansers more effective than others? Sure. But if you're just relying on shampoo, they're all going to give you more or less the same results.

2. The best way to dry your brushes is to hang them upside down. This keeps the water from getting onto the handle and weakening the glue/eating the wood. Everything just drips off the tip of the brush and you're good to go.

3. OLIVE OIL. This is the most magical brush tip ever and completely changed the brush washing game for me. If you swirl your brush tip in a bit of olive oil before cleansing it, it helps get out really tough stains. A lot of makeup is oil, and as oil dissolves oil, this does a heck of a job at cleaning things up. Plus it nourishes your brushes strands and makes them feel super soft when dried.

I don't do this when I'm in a hurry, but when I want to do a deep cleaning, olive oil does the trick.
Try this with your white tipped brushes.

4. Use warm water. It's more effective than cold water for removing grease and bacteria, but won't melt the glue holding the hairs on the handle like hot water will.