We heard from a certain celebrity makeup artist recently that not only is cleaning your brushes the most necessary, it’s actually kind of meditative. As in, it’s a way to decompress even if you recently quit that wallet-slimming Bikram membership. And when Nick Barose, the hand behind the seriously beautiful faces of Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, and Brie Larson, to name a few, began his brush-cleaning routine on set recently, we pretty much stopped everything and started taking notes.
Because let’s be real, cleaning our tools is the kind of thing that we know we should do routinely but somehow always gets pushed to the bottom of our never-ending to-do list. And yeah, we know, it’s really gross and probably the reason our chin is breaking out again, but we promise from today forward we’re going to make it a regular (or semi-regular) part of our housekeeping routine. Like a Wednesday night, turn on some music, slap on a face mask, and wash our Beauty Blender type of situation. Meditating and cleaning all in one go? That’s a win-win.
Makeup-Brush Cleaning 101 c/o Nick Barose
1. “Use a bar of baby soap or Ivory, something unscented, and swirl the brush into the bar.”
2. “It may only look dirty at the tip of the bristles, but it’s actually all the way to the root, so make sure to clean all the way down.”
3. “Clean the brushes until the water runs clear.”
4. “After you wash the brushes, reshape them and then lay them flat on a towel to dry.”
