A pristine hairbrush is a basic essential! Firstly for hygiene, but also to make your brushing sessions in the bathroom easier. Le Mag' shares its best maintenance tips for a perpetually clean brush! Whether you use classic brushes or specialized combs, maintenance is essential for the health of your hair.
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Whether round, square, wooden, handleless, pneumatic, with soft or hard bristles, we all have a hairbrush in our beauty kit. A common everyday object, we use it mechanically at any time of the day.
Brushing one's hair has become a true reflex in the morning upon waking, after an intense workout, or before heading out for a night on the town.
In short, the hairbrush is an extension of our hand! Without it, it's difficult to detangle your beautiful mane and properly stimulate your scalp.
However, used every day, this hair accessory gets dirty...
Why does my brush get dirty?
Imagine a pair of shoes you wear 7 days a week in all weather... After a while, they're not as sparkling as they were at the beginning. Well, it's the same for your brush!
The accumulation of residue on your brush's boar bristles can affect your daily hair care. Boar bristle brushes are particularly appreciated for their beneficial action on scalp health.
Daily, it comes into contact with your hair, and everything that entails: dead skin, sebum, dust, shampoo residues and styling products, dust mites... All of this gets lodged in the nooks and crannies and on the bristles of your brush. The result: a veritable colony of bacteria! Your hairbrush must seem much less glamorous all of a sudden...
Since you clean your makeup sponges every day, why not do the same with your hairbrush? Because a healthy brush means a healthy scalp too!
Tips for cleaning your hairbrush
Rest assured, it's perfectly possible and easy to maintain your equipment; running to the store every month will do you no good. What you need are a few small tips.
“Dry” cleaning
After each use, make it a habit to remove dead hair and lint from the surface of your brush. And once a week, remove hair stuck in the bristles. You can easily find online a small tool similar to a rake whose metal teeth will perfectly grip the most stubborn hairs.
The toothbrush technique
If you want to go further in weekly maintenance because you have rather long hair, you can use one of your old toothbrushes. With a drop of gentle shampoo, it will allow you to remove excess dirt that can accumulate in a few days. Don't forget to rinse the scrubbed areas with clean water.
This method is ideal for a wooden brush, which you can then wipe with a clean cloth to preserve its material.
Disinfecting the brush
For a deeper cleaning, i.e., at least once a month, have a replacement brush ready! Indeed, your main brush will be treated to a little bath of a few hours in a mixture of lukewarm water and baking soda (5 tablespoons in 1L of water). The duration can vary depending on how much sebum it has accumulated. For optimal disinfection, you can rub your brush with another one for several minutes so that the mixture penetrates well to the base of the bristles.
Note that for wooden brushes, this method should remain occasional as they should not soak for too long.
For drying, open air will be your best ally! And yes, because the hot air from the hair dryer could damage the plastic.
Believe us, there are only benefits to cleaning your brush. The fact that it prevents your hair from getting greasy too quickly is already an excellent reason that should motivate you to adopt this good resolution!
