Makeup Brush Guide

“If used right, you can own the night.” – Makeup Brushes & Techniques To Use

One might own fancy eye shadows, or contouring palettes but until she has the right brushes and use the right techniques all will be useless. So girls if you are all stocked up with your makeup kits, it’s time to learn about basic brushes you need to steal the limelight.

Foundation Brush

A foundation brush has densely packed bristles with a tapered tip to provide smooth and even liquid foundation application. You should always dampen your foundation brush, this way the brush will absorb less liquid and will still provide nice coverage.

Concealer Brush

A concealer brush is same as foundation brush just with little less bristles. Take little concealer on the tip of the brush and dab on the spot you want to conceal. Don’t blend, just dab, until you achieve desired even finish.

Eye Shadow Applicator & Blender

Eye shadows generally come with small applicator, which are mostly scratchy, so you must own at least one eye shadow brush. Eye shadow brushes are long tailed but have small bristles. The small but fluffy bristles, make them perfect for blending. You can even achieve smokey eyes look with a simple eye shadow brush.

Blush/Compact Brush

Blush/Compact/Highlighter/Bronzer, these all require very less amount to be picked up, applied blended seamlessly. Blush brush/powder brush comes with long tail and fluffy angled bristles. Swipe the brush across the blush/highlighter and then across your cheeks.

Eye Liner Brush:

Fill your lower lash with kohl or achieve a winged eye liner with the help of this brush. Gel eye liners in pot require these type of brushes. These brushes have very small pointy tip to pick small product & give you a precision line. You can build up the line width at your desire.

Lip Brush:

Fill your lips with desired colour from a pot of lip colour with the help of this brush. These brushes are almost the same as eye liner brush but not that pointy. This type of brush has small tapered tip so that you can fill your lips.

Brow n Lash Brush

This type of brush has two parts- Comb & small brush.

Using the comb part, comb through the clumsy brows and lashes but gently. You can also take off excess mascara from your lashes with the comb part of the brow brush.

The brush part of eyebrow brush could be used to brush the unruly thick brows. This is an essential brush in eye brow grooming mostly ignored. Try and see the difference by yourself.

Some More Fancy Brushes, That You Might Be Interested Into

Kabuki Brush

These type of brushes has small handle but really fluffy and round tips. These are perfect to put on powder foundations or setting powders.

Gently swipe the kabuki brush across the powder, tap the brush on the edge of the powder container to shed off the extra product. Apply the powder on your face by moving the brush in circular motion.

Stippling Brush

A stippling brush is used to achieve air brush finish. You can apply foundation, blusher, highlighter anything you want. Mostly stippling brushes have two types of bristles, dense black bristles at the bottom, fluffy white bristles at the top. Pick foundation via white bristles and gently pat on your face like you are dotting the product on. Now gently swirl the brush in small circular motion to achieve a flawless finish.

Blending Brush

As the name says, its used for blending purposes, be it eye shadow, highlighter or bronzer. Streaks of colours on eye or cheeks won’t look good. Blending is the key to flawless makeup. The blending brushes are fluffy.

Smudger Brush

This type of brush is used to smoothen the eye shadow edges in a smokey eye look. After you have applied the kohl to your eyes, lightly swipe the smudger from one end to other. Repeat until, desired look achieved.

Angular Brush

These are regular brushes with just an angled cut so that it can take care of your high and low points. Be it eye shadow blending or perfect blush application, you need precision. Angular brush takes care of that precision. You are supposed to put the angled side against your cheek and then glide across your cheek maintaining the same angle. Viola, you are done.

Fan Brush

This brush comes handy if you encounter an accident with your eye shadow. Lightly fluff away the fallen eye shadow off your under eyes. Also you can apply powder blush, highlighter or bronzer. When you need an even but sheer coverage, fan brush is helpful.

Beauty Blender Or Makeup Brush?

Beauty Blenders are so hit these days that most of the brushes are ditched. You can apply foundation, highlighter, bronzer all just with the help of a beaut blender. Beauty Blender are specially designed makeup sponges with pointed tip to attain perfectly blended edges.

So you can replace some basic brushes with a beauty blender. But if you are a hardcore makeup lover, you won’t want to replace any brush to keep the originality. Beauty blenders can be handy while travelling though.

I started with Vega brushes and very quickly moved to Colorbar & PAC brushes, very few from MAC. Colorbar & PAC brushes worked like charm. Vega brushes are affordable but quality is not that impressive.

How To Clean Your Brushes?

You can either use ready made brush cleaning pads or simply the palm of your hand. Bring the brush under the running tap. Now sprinkle little hand wash/ gentle shampoo on the brush. Rub it against the cleaning pad or your palm. Rinse. Repeat if required. Put the brushes in a brush holder or a glass/mug to dry naturally.