Oh beauty blenders. A makeup guru’s staple. The YouTube influencer’s favorite blending tool. As for me, a professionally trained makeup artist, I will NEVER use them. I have never been a fan since learning about them when I was in makeup school. After doing more research, I really didn’t like them from what I found out from the experts. I will talk about why I don’t use beauty sponges and why you should stop today.

What is a beauty blender/beauty sponge?

It’s a tear dropped sponge that is used to apply most commonly foundation. It comes in many colors, but the most common is bright pink or orange. When it’s damp, it seamlessly blends out your liquid foundation or concealer. You apply your products using stippling effects and bouncing methods for best results. This is all great! Don’t get me wrong. It really does what it’s supposed to and makes your foundation look bomb. But this isn’t why I don’t like this makeup tool.

This is a sponge

A sponge soaks up product. So it will soak up all your foundation and it will hold in bacteria since it is damp. I will talk about the bacteria side in another section, but a beauty blender does exactly what it is supposed to do. It will waste your product in all honesty. You will use less foundation if you apply it with a makeup brush.  

This changes your product’s formulation 

When you dampen the beauty blender, you are putting water in the sponge and dipping it into your cream based or oil based foundation. Those products don’t mix very well; in fact, they repel each other. This changes your formulation and could possibly make your products not work as well as they should.

When you clean it… Is it truly clean??

You can definitely clean your beauty sponge with any soap and water. But even after that, it still isn’t truly clean. If you cut the beauty blender in half and look inside, you can see that there is still product build up inside. That alone tells you that your sponge is not clean. Also, you cannot truly disinfect your sponge and kill the bacteria. You cannot truly disinfect a sponge. I will say this again and shout it from the rooftops. You cannot truly disinfect a beauty blender. The more porous a surface is, the more difficult it is to disinfect properly. Sponges are extremely porous and almost impossible to disinfect. Okay, I won’t keep saying it over and over again. I think you get the point.

What I use instead

A brush! In fact, I use multiple brushes to get that flawless effect! Yes, the most simple solution. I use a makeup brush to apply ALL of my makeup. No fingers (umm gross) and definitely no beauty blenders *throws up*. You can truly clean your makeup brushes and disinfect them properly so they are all safe to use on clients and yourself so you don’t break out in pimples or have a reaction because your tools are properly cleaned.

Summary

I love the finish that a beauty blender gives you, but I truly cannot get past the sanitation part. A beauty blender is a sponge and it soaks up all your products. You end up wasting a lot more foundation than you do when you use a brush. This tool changes your foundation/concealer formulation. When you dampen a beauty blender you are mixing water and a cream or oil based product, and those definitely don’t mix well at all. Lastly, you cannot truly disinfect a sponge and sometimes there is still product inside the beauty blender.

My favorite tool that I use to apply foundation and concealer is a brush. You can clean them properly and with the right brushes, you can get that flawless look that you are going for. Beauty blenders are a staple in a makeup artist’s kit and it will never be in mine. I am just a clean freak and you should care about how clean your tools truly are.

I hope this shed some light on this subject and opened your eyes to keeping your tools clean and making sure that YOU are safely applying makeup. I am so passionate about makeup and all things beauty, but sanitation comes first. 

xoxo,
Katlyn

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