Makeup Brushes: How to Clean Them by Raw Beauty Minerals

Imagine washing your face, moisturizing, brushing your teeth, getting dressed and then dusting your face with a smattering of bacteria, oils and germs.

Sounds great until that last part, right?

But believe it or not, so many women do exactly that. By using dirty makeup brushes and sponges, you can cause breakouts, dry skin, clogged pores and other skin problems. Luckily, there’s an easy solution.

Cleaning your makeup brushes can take a little getting used to, but once you make it part of your routine, it’s easy to stick to. Your makeup brushes should be a cleaning priority since they come in contact with your face on a daily basis.

While there are lots of special products on the market, including various soaps as well as cleaning matts and drying racks, you can actually do all the cleaning you need to with products you already have at home. Here’s what that process looks like.

1. Begin by mixing a little bit of dish soap with a bowl of warm water. Keep the water fairly shallow and stir it around to get it sudsy.

2. Place all of your makeup brushes in the bowl to let them soak for a few minutes. It’s important on this step that you don’t have the water any deeper than the length of the brush bristles. If the water goes up to the handles of the brushes it’s likely to loosen the glue and cause the brush to fall apart more quickly.

3. Take each brush one by one and work through it with your fingers, rinsing it under clean water as you clean the makeup and dirt out. If you have a cleaning matt or tool, you can also use that here in place of your hands.

4. Reshape each brush so that it dries nicely and pat it dry with a towel. They will take at least several hours to dry, so set them up where the handle is propped higher than the bristles, that way the water isn’t dripping into the glue.

And there you have it! Clean makeup brushes. How often you wear makeup and how heavy your products are will determine how often you should clean your brushes, but Elle.com says that once a week is a good rule of thumb.

Need to stock up on new brushes? This nifty tool is actually four brushes in one and is a perfect kick start to a brush collection!