Knowing how to clean makeup brushes is important. Cleaning them removes the build up of old makeup and gets rid of any bacteria that might be trying to make a home in your brushes.
You should lightly clean your brushes between uses with a damp cloth (I love using the seedlings baby wipes from Young Living for this). Lightly cleaning them makes is a bit easier once you need to deep clean them.
You should deep clean your brushes several times a month, depending on how often you use them. If you use them everyday you should wash them once a week. Or if you're like me and you only use them lightly 1 or 2 times a week you can get away with deep cleaning them once every 2-3 weeks.
I've switched all my makeup and makeup brushes to Savvy Minerals makeup from Young Living. After spending that much for high quality brushes I wanted to make sure I was taking care of them correctly.
If you want to keep your brushes in good shape you need to clean them and dry them properly. Otherwise you could ruin them.
All you need for cleaning your brushes is a bar of soap (I use this one because I love the cleaning power of Thieves), two kitchen towels, and running warm water. You can use liquid soap if you prefer, but I find I get just the right amount of soap from the bar. You want enough soap and water to clean your brushes, but not so much that they go all the way up into where the bristles meet the handles. When that happens it can deteriorate the adhesive that's keeping the bristles in place and over time destroy the brush.
The process...
Take one of the kitchen towels and roll it into a tube. Then lay the remaining towel over it so that one end of the upper towel is raised. See the photos below for reference. This towel set up is important for drying your brushes. Once you clean the brushes you'll lay them out to dry with the handles on the raised end. This it to encourage any moisture away from where the bristles meet the handles.
Now that you have that set up - start the water. Make sure it's comfortable to the touch. Take your first dirty brush and hold it with the bristles pointing down and at a slight angle towards the water. Rotate the brush gently and let the water dampen the bottom of the bristles. Try not to let the water go more than halfway up the bristles. This is difficult with smaller brushes. Just make sure you're not soaking the whole brush in water.The point is to get the bottom of the bristles wet enough to create a lather with the soap.
After the bristles are damp, swirl the brush on top of the bar of soap until it gets sudsy. Apply light pressure. If you press too hard you'll force soap too far up the bristles. Once there are suds, start swirling the brush in the palm of your hand so it gets really sudsy and starts removing make up from the brush.
Keep the brush swirling on your hand and let some of the running water hit your hand. Keep doing this until most of the suds are gone. Then hold the brush in the water like you did when you dampened it and rinse until the suds are gone. You can check this by swirling it in your clean, damp hand. If suds or color appear again it needs to be rinsed or washed more.
Once the brush is clean, give it a gentle squeeze and a shake it to remove moisture, then move it to the drying station. Repeat with remaining brushes.
Dry and rotate...
Let them dry for a few hours and rotate them to help prevent the bristles from leaning to one side. I will clean my brushes in the evening and rotate them a few times before bed. By morning they are dry and ready to use again.
I have the Essential brush set and a few individual brushes like the eye liner brush and bronzer brush from Young Living. I love the way they apply my makeup. And they are sooo soft. It's a night and day difference from my old set of brushes and I cant imagine going back. I keep these babies in shape and plan on using them for years to come.
Here are some links if you'd like to know more about Savvy Mineral makeup and Young Living Essential oils.
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