The Ultimate Guide to Cleaning Your Makeup Brushes

One make-up pro on exactly how to clean your brushes.

This year, spring-cleaning comes early—at least for our beauty tools. No matter how flawlessly your favorite makeup brushes may perform, the only way to keep them bacteria-, dust-, and dirt-free is with a weekly washing. For tips, we turn to makeup artist Troy Surratt, who recently released his own line of highly covetable, artisanal makeup brushes based on principles learned in the calligraphy brush mecca of Kumano, Japan. Here, Surratt shares his fail-safe strategies for a successful brush bath.

(1) Cleanse

“Washing your brushes can [seem like] a chore, so create an experience that’s enjoyable,” says Surratt. To carry out this objective, he reaches for Oribe’s Signature Shampoo, which has an addictive lemon and bergamot scent and is gentle enough for even delicate natural hairs. If a brush is entirely caked in foundation or a sponge is soaked in silicones and oils, on the other hand, Surratt says that Dawn dish soap “works wonders” for degreasing.

(2) Lather

“Put some cleanser on a small dish. Wet your brush, then tap it into the soap to dilute the concentration a bit,” says Surratt. Next, work the brush back and forth in the palm of your hand to create a lather, then rinse it with tepid water until all of the soap is gone.

(3) Dry

To dry your brushes, it’s important to make sure the head of the brush is angled slightly down. “You don’t want any water seeping into the handle because that can affect the bundling of the bristles, as well as the handle itself,” says Surratt. If you need your brushes dry by morning, he suggests placing them on a cookie sheet padded with a Silpat baking mat as an extra layer of protection and placing them in a gas oven. No need to switch the oven on, as “the pilot light adds a bit of warmth and helps them dry quickly overnight.”