Natural Makeup Brushes - Did You Know That Meant Fur?

Recently I discovered that when a company says that their makeup brushes are made with natural bristles this means that they are made with animal hair, or fur. Maybe I'm naive, but this came a huge surprise for me because I like to think I am quite knowledgeable about the beauty industry and this is something that is never mentioned. I feel like this is something that needs to be spoken about more so that people can make an informed choice when shopping for makeup brushes as a lot of people, myself included, would never intentionally buy fur but are unaware it is used in brushes.

Good quality makeup brushes have historically always been expensive, something you really have to invest in. However, recently there has been huge growth in the availability of affordable, yet good quality brushes. One of the most notable brands producing them is Morphe, and you see almost every YouTuber and influencer using their brushes. Recently Morphe brushes have become a lot easier to get hold of here in the UK, so when my mum asked me to get her some new brushes for Christmas this was the were the first brand I looked at.

On the Morphe website there is a detailed description of each brush explaining what it is best used for and what it is made of. It was whilst reading the description of a natural haired blending brush that I noticed that the material listed was goat. I was confused; why would make a brush out of goat hair? I started looking at the materials listed for other brushes on the site and found that the majority of brushes were made of goat, sable, badger or synthetic hair. I then started looking at other companies that make brushes to see what materials they used and discovered that a lot of brands aren't as explicit in stating what the hairs are, but simply list them as natural. After learning this, I ask my mum and a few friends if they had any idea that natural meant animal hair and not a single person did. I also realised that a popular beauty YouTuber I watch, who speaks about being vegan and only used cruelty free products, uses natural brushes in almost all of her videos. I did tweet her about this but didn't get a response. All of this really made me think that this is something that not a lot of people know about which is why I decided to write about it.

Luckily there are a lot of great synthetic hair brushes on the market and I was very happy to find out that the two mains brush brands that I have purchased from in the past are both completely synthetic. The two I have used for a long time are Real Techniques and EcoTools. Both of these brands make lovely, high quality brushes that are super soft and affordable. You can find them in Boots and Superdrug as well as online. Spectrum Brushes also are a synthetic only company and although I only have one of their brushes but I was impressed with it and would purchase more. Brands such as Morphe, Sigma and Zoeva sell both synthetic and natural brushes so if you are purchasing from these brands you would have to look at the description of each individual brush to find out what it is made of. Brushes that are labelled as synthetic or vegan do not use any animal hair.

One of things I found most interesting whilst researching this is that brands can still be considered 'Cruelty Free' if they sell natural hair brushes as 'Cruelty Free' just means that none of their products are tested on animals at any point in their manufacturing and they are not sold in China. A brand can also be 'Cruelty Free' but not 'Vegan' and vice versa so if this is something that is important to you make sure you do your research.

I hope you found this informative, I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't buy, but I feel like consumers should be fully aware of what they are buying and that this isn't widely discussed. I am not vegetarian or vegan but I would never knowingly buy fur so I do not want to use natural brushes and I'm glad I learnt about this when I did. If you have any questions please let me know!