10 Best Makeup Brushes, According to Professional Makeup Artists
We've got one for all of your needs: powder, eyeshadow, foundation, and more.
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You can have the best skin care products and the most amazing makeup, but the truth about makeup is that the finished product will only look as good as the tools you use to put it on with. Artists don't use finger paints for a masterpiece, so you shouldn't use your hands to apply your makeup if you want a truly flawless finish. "Brushes have the ability to really buff product into the skin," says Patrick Ta, celebrity makeup artist and founder of Patrick Ta Beauty. "A great brush ensures even coverage, [and] has the ability to keep skin looking like skin."
Your makeup brushes should conceal imperfections and give all-day, natural-looking coverage, and using the wrong makeup brushes (or worse, your hands) can result in an uneven tone, streaky application, and blemishes peeking through. That's why our Good Housekeeping Institute Beauty Lab experts teamed with professional makeup artists to find the best makeup brushes on the market.
In Lab testing, we collected 381 brushes from 63 brands ranging in price from $2 to $90, and surveyed 1,557 panelists to learn what's most important to consumers when shopping for makeup brushes, including price point, ease of use, feel on skin, and application results. We narrowed down the field to 65 brushes across six categories (eye shadow, foundation, concealer, blush, contour, and powder), obscured brand labels to remove any bias, and had our makeup artists put the brushes to the test to find the best of the best.
In case you're wondering if synthetic or natural makeup brushes are better:
In our tests, all of the top performing brushes were synthetic. Synthetic brushes are the best bet for most people — they're more precise, easier to clean, more versatile, and leave a great finish. Perhaps best of all, they're cruelty-free.
"Natural fiber brushes are usually made from some form of animal hair and are porous, so they trap more product," says Edwin Batista, director of education at Dr. Hauschka. Plus, brushes made with animal hair can be an allergen trigger, and since they're porous, they can only be used with powder products, says Beauty Lab senior chemist, Sabina Wizemann.
Below, are the best makeup brushes and sets you can buy, according to Beauty Lab experts, makeup artists, and reviewers.
Jessica (she/her) is a deputy editor at the Good Housekeeping Institute and a longtime product tester, reviewer, writer and editor of beauty and lifestyle content. She has over a decade of industry experience, previously as beauty editor at USA Today's Reviewed where she launched the Beauty vertical and tested hundreds of products and has covered trends for publications like The Boston Globe and The New York Times. You can usually find her sorting through piles of beauty products — and testing the best ones on camera.
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