How to Clean your Makeup Brushes

Second only to washing your face on a regular basis, the most important step you should take to ensure your skin's health and easy makeup application is making sure that you clean your makeup brushes on a regular basis. Like anything you use or touch often, makeup brushes can collect bacteria over time. However, since those brushes are going to rub against your skin (especially your sensitive facial skin), you should really be sure that your brushes are as clean as possible to reduce chances of acne or irritation! Also, think about dragging dirty brushes through your makeup every day. Each time you swipe your unclean blush brush across your blush, your basically infusing it with dirt and bacteria. GROSS!!

Keeping your brushes clean also preserves the quality of your brushes. Makeup can cake up on brushes and if left unclean, the brush hairs can begin to degrade and your brushes will fall apart. I don't know about you, but the less often I have to spend anywhere from $20.00 to well over $100.00 for a new brush set, the better!

So, for the good of your skin, your makeup, and your brushes (*cough* wallet *cough*), you should clean your brushes anywhere from once a week to once a month, depending on how often you use them. For example, if you apply makeup at least twice a day, every day, you need to clean your brushes once a week. And of course, if you use makeup less often, you can wait up to a month to clean them. But no matter how thoroughly you clean them or how often, you should consider replacing your brushes every 10 months to a year.

Here's what you'll need to clean your makeup brushes:
1) Dirty makeup brushes
2) A bowl. I'd recommend using one that you don't constantly use for cooking.
3) A clean towel.
4) Brush cleaner. A good brush cleaner will also have a built-in conditioner that will keep your brushes from loosing their natural oils, or softness.

First, pour about 40 ml of brush cleaner into your bowl. I bought FaceSecrets' Professional Brush Cleaner from Sally's Beauty Supply. WARNING: It smells very strongly from rubbing alcohol. Do not do this in a tight space that isn't well-ventilated.

Once you have your cleaner poured, swirl each brush through the cleaner for no more than 10 seconds. If you leave a brush in for too long, the hairs can become dried out at will be damaged.


Bigger brushes like this kabuki will soak up most of your cleanser. To squeeze it out, lightly press the brush against the side of your bowl. You can technically do this with all of your brushes to release the excess liquid. It is important to ONLY dip the hairs into the cleanser, not the whole brush. If you go past the metal part, there's a good chance the glue holding the brush together will begin to disintegrate.

After swirling each brush in the cleaner, wipe it back and forth gently on the towel until all of the makeup and alcohol is out of the hairs. It's going to look a bit gross, but that's good because then you know your brushes are 100% clean!

Look at all the old foundation and bronzer. EWWWW!!!!! This should wash right out of your towel, but if you're worried about staining, use an old towel that you don't use frequently.

The liquid left in the bowl will also resemble mud:

Gross! Empty the bowl immediately and wash it out to prevent staining or the smell from 'sticking' to the bowl.

Your brushes should look gorgeously clean, now!

To allow your brushes to dry properly, stand them upright in a cup or mug for at least 8 hours (I normally give mine 14).

Here, I put my face brushes in one mug and my eye brushes in another to allow more air to circulate. You'll know your brushes are fully dry when they are 1) no longer slippery to the touch and 2) do not smell from rubbing alcohol.