Is Your Hairbrush Damaging Your Hair?

We always think that over manipulation is the culprit when we begin seeing damage to the hair - but sometimes we're just using subpar tools. Too much work goes into keeping those lock silky and fine or coily and lustrous - whichever applies to you! Here are some signs that your hairbrush may be doing some of the damage:

1. You're experiencing breakage. 

On the daily, we should be losing no more than 50-100 hair strands per day. This is hardly a palm fool - so if you're experiencing more than that you should start investigating. Hair loss can definitely be caused by a number of things (often treatments/manipulation) but if you're seeing loss or damage at the ends in particular (think scraggly, uneven, thin ends) the brush is a good place to look.

2. Your bristles are damaged or inappropriate.

Dull or inappropriate bristles could be causing you to drag tangles from the base of your scalp all the way through the ends of/roots of your hair. Horr -i - ble. This is technically a combination of brush quality and brush use. You could have a fantastic paddle or detangling brush but it's our opinion that you should never detangle from root to tip and should always detangle tip to root - that way you can avoid unnecessarily dragging tangles through otherwise untangled hair. Otherwise, if your bristles are old, dull, bent, or simply not the right kind for your hair, you could also be looking at brush damage.

3. Is your brush dirty? 

Another reason! If your brush is dirty it actually can make it more difficult for it to properly glide through your hair! You're also adding build up and dirt back into your hair and onto your strands which is never good for the health of your hair. Read our post here about properly cleaning your brush.  

Keep in mind that sometimes the solution is just - getting a new brush. Not something we think about often, but they need to be rotted. Generally speaking you'll have to replace based on your personal frequency and style of use, but at minimum we recommend once a year. We know there are some brushes that just keep getting better with age, etc and those are likely the ones you're keeping for that longer period of time. But for those basic run of the mill paddle brushes - once very 6 months is probably a good rule of thumb.

Talk to you later, beauties. 

xoxo