Which brush should you choose for curly hair?

Ask ten people with curly hair about brushes and you will get ten answers, half of them contradictory. Some will tell you never to brush at all. Others swear by a particular model. The honest answer is that the tool matters less than when and how you use it — but that some tools make it much harder to do the wrong thing.

Here is what each type is actually for, and which ones are worth having.

The rule that matters more than the tool

Detangle wet, with conditioner in, working from the ends upwards, in sections. That is the whole of it.

Dry curly hair has no slip. A knot pulled at dry does not slide apart, it breaks — and the breakage happens along the length, where you will not see it for months. Conditioner gives the strands something to slide against. Working from the ends upwards means each knot is freed with the shortest possible length of hair behind it; starting at the roots drags every tangle down the hair and gathers them into one immovable mass at the bottom.

If you take one thing from this article: never detangle dry hair. Not with any brush, not with any comb, not with your best intentions.

Your fingers

Free. Always available. The most gentle option, and the one that tells you the most — you feel a knot before you tear it, which no tool can do. Many people with tightly coiled hair use nothing else, and their hair is the better for it.

The drawback is time, and that fingers leave small tangles behind that build up over weeks into matting. Most people do best with fingers first, then a tool to catch what the fingers missed.

A wide-tooth comb

The safest tool there is, and where anyone unsure should start. Widely spaced teeth pass through the hair without gathering it, so there is less force on any single strand. Slower than a brush, and it will not smooth or clump curls — but it will not damage much either.

Use it in the shower with conditioner in. A shower detangler comb is worth having simply because keeping one where you actually detangle removes the temptation to do it later, dry, on the sofa.

A detangling brush

Flexible bristles at varying heights, designed to pass through knots rather than force them. Faster than a comb over a whole head, and gentler than an ordinary paddle brush. The Denman D12 is the version we see most, and it is a sound first brush for wavy and loosely curly hair.

The mistake is to use it as an everyday brush. It is a wet-hair, conditioner-in tool, like everything else here.

A styling brush — the Denman D3 and its relatives

This is the one people mean when they say a brush changed their hair. The D3 has rows of closely set nylon pins in a rubber pad, and it does something a comb cannot: it gathers strands together into defined, uniform clumps as it passes through. On wavy and curly hair, brushing a section with product in — with the brush, on soaking wet hair — produces noticeably more defined curls than scrunching alone.

It is not a detangling brush. Take the tangles out first, then use it to shape. It comes in different widths; the D3 with seven rows is the standard, and the narrower five-row versions like the D14 are easier on shorter hair, fringes and travel.

A useful trick: many people remove one or two rows of pins to reduce the tension, which makes the brush gentler and gives looser clumps. If your hair is fine or fragile, start there.

An afro pick

Not for detangling and not for definition — a pick is for volume, used at the roots on dry hair once styling is finished and the hair has set. Lift from underneath, at the scalp, without dragging it through the lengths. Used through the whole head it will separate every clump you spent the morning creating, which is precisely the effect some people want and most do not.

What to avoid

• Fine-tooth combs on curly hair — they gather tangles instead of passing through them
• Cheap brushes with plastic balls on the bristle tips; the balls come off and the exposed ends snag the cuticle
• Boar bristle brushes on tight curls — designed to distribute oil down straight hair, they simply pull here
• Any brush on dry hair, unless you are deliberately stretching it out

Look after the tool

Brushes accumulate product, oil and shed hair, and then redistribute all three onto clean hair. Pull the shed hair out after every use and wash the brush properly every few weeks — warm water, a drop of shampoo, bristles down to dry so water does not sit in the pad.

If you are starting from nothing, buy a wide-tooth comb and use it wet. If that is going well and you want more definition, add a D3. Two tools, used at the right moment, will do more for your hair than a drawer full used at the wrong one. Come and see us in Curepipe or Beau Bassin and we will show you the technique on your own hair — it is much easier to copy than to read.