How to clean your makeup brushes with Jen Brown

What’s the difference between cleaning and washing your brushes, and when should you do each? Resident makeup artist Jen Brown explains the importance of both and shows us in detail how to do so.

Hey everybody, today I'm going to show you how to clean your makeup brushes. 

So, cleaning your makeup brushes is hugely important as a professional artist I have to do it after every single use, but for your personal use, you could probably get away with a little bit less than that. So this is going to be a full breakdown on how to wash your brushes, when to wash them, and what products you can use.

Now, washing your brushes is super important not only to prevent the transfer of bacteria onto the skin, but it's also great to add to the lifespan of your brushes. So, if you are properly cleaning them and caring for them they will last you a really long time. 

All right, so how often do you need to actually clean these things? Right, so there is a difference between cleaning your brushes and washing your brushes. I would say that you should clean them after every use and it's super simple it really takes no time at all. If you just get into the habit of getting a little spray cleaner and just taking it on a towel, give it a quick spritz, a quick wipe after every use, and just putting it right back. It'll prevent that transfer of product. Walgreens has a few different varieties of spray brush cleaners, I'll make sure that we link it down below so you can pick one that you like. But it's super easy and it's just a great habit to get into. 

Now, when it comes to actually washing your brushes, this is something that I would suggest for your personal use, you could probably get away with doing once a month. Now of course you can always pick up like a dish soap, or a castile soap, or something like that to wash your brushes with, totally works. I personally really like to use an actual brush cleaner, and I choose that because they tend to have more conditioning agents for the brushes, which helps add to the lifespan of your brush. The one that I grabbed from Walgreens is the Japonesque Solid Brush Cleaner. Now, I love this format for a cleaner because it comes in this little container, it's just one solid soap in the center. So you can rinse your brush, swirl it in the container, so it's super contained, neat, tidy, very easy and, compact. 

So now that you know how often to clean your brushes and what products to look for, I'm going to give you a demo on how to actually wash these things.

Welcome to my kitchen sink! Okay, so you want to start with clean hands, clean sink. I like to use very warm water. Now, what you want to do is you want to just grab your brush and just douse the bristles in water. You want to make sure that you don't get any water in this metal part of the brush. This is where the glue is that keeps the bristles attached. So if the more you get water in here, the more prone this is to coming off, or the bristles will fall out. So try to keep the water only at the bristles and keep it pointed downward so that it doesn't roll down into the brush. You like to swirl it into your soap, get a little bit of a lather going, and then with your clean hands just kind of like workup that lather and let it work through the product. And I kind of like to rinse it that way too. There's these great little silicone pads that are textured so that they really get into those bristles and get like a deep clean. So this is kind of nice to use sometimes and I'll rinse it with that as well. Again, keeping it pointed down. Keeping the water only on the bristles and then gently squeezing out excess water. So, you want to make sure that the water that runs out is running clean and there you have a very clean brush.

So, there you have it! You want to make sure that you clean your brushes in between uses and then you deep clean them once a month. I hope this video was helpful, if you liked it give it a thumbs up. If you want to see more like it you can subscribe down below, and of course, if you want to know more about me and my work you can check it out at jenbrownmakeup.com.