The Big Brush Dilemma…
Published on Friday 15th February 2008
Working in the cosmetics industry, the most common questions I get asked is which company make the best brushes and which brushes are essential? Being a makeup junkie I love most brushes and see them all as essential so... they’re tricky questions to answer!
However I recently had a bit of a revamp of my brush collection so I thought I’d share my findings with you!
It was very clear which brushes are my favourites as they were the ones in my collection that were crying out to be replaced. Most in need was my foundation brush – my loyal aide! I remember the day I first applied foundation with a brush and I would never go back.
I urge you to try if you haven’t before. It’s so easy, your hands don’t get covered in it, you end up using a lot less foundation and you get much closer to the flawless finish we all crave.
I’ve probably tried every brand of Foundation Brush and I think Estee Lauder  and Benefit do the best.
My second must-have is a concealer brush. For dark under-eyes, blemishes, uneven skin tone – these brushes can help you hide the worst of anything! They’re so important because if you apply concealer with your fingertips most of it stays on your fingers. With a brush you can pat the product neatly on your skin and blend easily around the edges. I rate MAC and Body Shop for this.
 Next on the list is a decent blush brush. These are essential for blending your blush colour and contouring your cheekbones.
My favourites are the angled brush by Kent and the Bobbi Brown blush brush.
I’ve always loved Bobbi brushes – in fact I’ve got my eye on their deluxe brush set . It's quites pricey but it has everything you need.
For eyeshadow application you can do a pretty decent job with the brushes that are included with the product.
If you do want to use brushes though, it's good to have 3 (yes 3!) brushes of different sizes. One to sweep all over the eye socket to apply the base colour, one to apply the main colour and for blending, and then one to define colour and use as a highlighter.
Lastly, I couldn’t live without my eye liner brushes. Mine were in a pretty sorry state when I had my recent revamp so I bought a few from different brands to compare and contrast. The most important quality I look for is one with an angle – essential to create the smokey eye look that I’m currently mad about. I bought an Estee Lauder and a Nars eyeliner brush. Both are great and I'm promising myself I’ll take more care of them this time round!
Hope that helps... just remember that it's important to pay for quality with brushes – the cheaper ones tend to lose hairs and this will drive you mad!
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