Makeup Brushes and Sponges: What You Need

Makeup Brushes and Sponges

A sixteen-piece set is mostly brushes you will never pick up. Six or seven shapes cover a full face, and buying those individually in a decent quality beats a large set of thin ones. What a brush is made of decides which products it handles well, and how often you wash it decides what it does to your skin.

The short list

A dense flat-topped or slightly domed brush for foundation. A small, firm brush for concealer and spot work. A big fluffy brush for loose powder and a smaller tapered one for setting under the eyes. A soft angled brush for blush and bronzer. For eyes, a flat packing brush and one fluffy blending brush. That is a full face; everything after it is convenience rather than capability.

Synthetic or natural hair

Synthetic bristles do not absorb product, which makes them the right choice for anything wet or creamy: foundation, concealer, cream blush, brow pomade. Natural hair holds powder better and diffuses it more softly, which is why powder and blending brushes are often natural. Good synthetic brushes now do both jobs well enough that an all-synthetic kit is a reasonable decision, and they are easier to wash and quicker to dry.

What a sponge does differently

A damp sponge sheers foundation out and presses it into the skin, which gives a lighter, more skin-like result than any brush. Dampen it properly and squeeze the water out, because a dry sponge drinks product and a soaking one dilutes it. Bounce rather than drag. A sponge also does the pressing work for powder under the eyes. Treat them as consumables, not tools, since they tear and stain with use.

Washing them

Brushes that touch liquid or cream pick up oil and bacteria and want washing weekly; powder and eye brushes can go two or three weeks. Use a gentle shampoo or a brush cleanser, work the lather out under lukewarm water with the bristles pointing down so nothing runs into the ferrule, squeeze the hairs back into shape, and dry them flat or hanging, never standing up in a cup.

When to replace one

A brush is finished when the bristles splay and will not reshape after a wash, when it sheds onto your face, or when the glue lets go and the head wobbles. Sponges go sooner: replace any that has torn, stopped springing back, or kept a smell after washing. Cheap brushes fail at the glue first, which is the one place paying a little more genuinely buys years.