This year at Pro beauty I made purchases. Normally I don’t, but the StylPro Brush Cleaner was a must have on my list. The inventor Tom Pelleneau came up with the design after a conversation with a make up artist and has improved the way that we clean and more importantly for me sanitise brushes.
Every Sunday you will see Instagram posts from people says ‘Waaaaa!! I hate cleaning my make up brushes’! I actually enjoy this process. I own a lot of brushes but as with my wardrobe I have about fifty percent of them in rotation. Some are expensive. Some are very cheap, all are functional and while some get spot cleaned after use but all get properly cleaned on a weekly basis.
With the StylePro Brush Cleaner is that you can sanitise and dry your brushes in super quick time. There are lots of ways to clean your brushes – you can use soap and water, liquid soap / detergent and water, detergent /oil and water or solvent. This product uses a cleanser which is a mixture of both oil (wheat germ) and solvent (alcohol) as well as a touch of fragrance. You can also use a water and detergent mix, which is especially useful for powder products. Using the brush cleaner that the brand has created or a water / detergent mix or even a solvent, you can clean, sanitise and dry the brush quicker than before. No more putting brush on a towel on the ledge, no more waiting for brushes to dry.
You can assemble the StylPro Brush Cleaner kit in pretty quick time and once assembled you just choose the correct collar for the brush, dunk the brush in the cleaner and attach it to the centrifugal unit. Once you push the switch, the brush is spun very quickly. The centrifugal force pushes the bristles outward along. Any product on the brush and the cleaner be it solvent or a water / detergent mix get drawn to the end of the brush and off the brush into the bowl leaving you with a clean sanitised brush. Depending on the size of the brush, This can take between ten and thirty seconds. If the brush has been cleaned properly it will be dry. If the brush is not clean, you will still see product, usually in the middle of the brush and it will remain damp. The centrifugal force does not affect the shape of the brush when dry, your fan brush returns to it’s fan shape when you turn the unit off.
I have used this on both mine and my sister’s brushes. Brushes of all shapes and sizes ,bristle types and price ranges. The brush it struggled most with was the Marc Jacobs Foundation III brush. Not because it was a difficult shape, but because the high level of pigmentation in the product meant it took three sets of cleanser and cleaning to get it perfectly clean. For this brush I do a pass with detergent and water the old fashioned way to get the majority of the product out before going in with the cleanser. It is the same way that I would use a micellar water on my face before a cleanser. None of the collars fit my Tom Ford Bronzer Brush and if you have a mixture of dark and white haired bristles, I would definitely advise to doing the white haired bristles first.
This is a great bit of kit. It certainly speeds up my brush cleaning time and my hands are not suspended in water. There is room for improvement:-
- Cant clean double ended brushes
- No collar fits my Tom Ford Bronzer Brush
- It is noisy
- It is a bit fiddly
- Very pigmented products (like Marc Jacobs Re(Marc)able foundtion need more time to make sure the brush is clean
- If you have alot of brushes you get through alot of the cleanser
No doubt this is the first iteration of the StylPro Brush Cleaner. Tom Pelleneau is a prolfic inventor s the first iteration of what I am sure will be many but if you have alot of brushes I would definitely recommend it.