Before ordering brushes, most customers usually ask if the brush is made of natural hair and whether it is very soft. However, it is not entirely correct to judge a brush’s quality solely by the softness of its bristles.
Look at the material first: to judge whether a makeup brush is good or bad, the most important factor is the bristle material.
The bristles of professional makeup brushes are generally divided into two categories: natural animal hair and synthetic fiber hair (mainly nylon or Taklon). But some makeup brushes need a certain stiffness to achieve a better makeup effect, so they use a mix of natural and artificial hair. Whether the bristles feel soft or not is subjective, as everyone’s skin sensitivity is different. Therefore, you should choose a brush based on the desired makeup effect and your own skin’s needs.
The overall quality of the brush should be evaluated comprehensively. This includes the tips of the bristles, hair elasticity, shedding rate, hair color, and hair shape. You should also check the material and plating color of the ferrule (the metal tube), the handle material, and the joint between the handle and the ferrule. Finally, consider whether the brush feels scratchy on the hand and the printing quality of the product logo.
Common material comparison: The price of the raw hair (which does not equal the total cost of a brush) does not always indicate the quality of the brush. The main factors affecting the final price are: the brand, the materials of each brush part, processing requirements, quality standards, product function, size, batch quantity, and packaging.
We recommend choosing materials based on their specific traits and your makeup goals. The most difficult material to identify is actually blended hair. For instance, a manufacturer might mix genuine sable hair with synthetic sable. Because both pure sable and fake sable look and feel very similar in color, shape, and softness, they are hard to tell apart. Once these two materials are evenly blended and shaped into a brush head, even professional brush engineers find it difficult to identify the difference visually.
A good identification method is to pull out a few hairs to check if the bundle is truly uniform in color, shape, softness, and gloss. During production, the hair is combed repeatedly. If low-quality hair is mixed with good hair, true uniformity cannot be achieved, resulting in small, uneven blocks of color or texture. You will notice subtle differences in the shape, softness, and luster. (Note on genuine sable/weasel hair: It is top-tier. Its texture is perfectly balanced, making it ideal for lip, eyeliner, and eyeshadow brushes. In reality, pure sable brushes are rare on the market because the raw material costs hundreds of times more than ordinary hair.)
How can you truly know the hair type? You can identify the real material through three major techniques: look, smell, and touch.
Here is how to distinguish between natural animal hair and synthetic fiber:
Firstly, by visual inspection: high-grade synthetic hair is relatively stiff except for the very tips, and it feels extremely smooth. If you bend a nylon bristle 60 degrees and release it, it effortlessly restores its original shape.
Secondly, by checking the length tolerance: if you compare multiple batches of the same product, look at how the hair aligns with the ferrule. The hair length variance in synthetic brushes is usually much larger than in animal hair brushes. Because nylon hair is so smooth, it tends to slide when pulled into the ferrule during production, making the exposed hair length slightly unstable. You can identify it by this manufacturing tolerance.
Thirdly, the burn test. Whether you are a newcomer or a makeup veteran, this method successfully separates animal hair from synthetic fiber. Take just one strand of hair from the brush and hold it to a flame for one second. You can distinguish them by the following characteristics:
Animal hair characteristics:
Look: Easy to burn, produces a flame.
Smell: Smells exactly like burning human hair.
Touch: The burnt residue turns into ash, which you can easily crush with your fingers.
Synthetic fiber characteristics:
Look: Difficult to burn, produces no flame, but melts into a clump.
Smell: It melts rather than burns. Initially, there is no smell, but prolonged burning produces a plastic odor.
Touch: After melting, it recrystallizes into a hard bead. It feels solid when touched and will not crush into ash.
