Bombshell Birch Wood Round Brush — 3″

The largest round brush in the range, and the one for long hair. A three-inch barrel wraps a wide section in a single turn, which is what smooths rather than bends. If you want a blowout that falls straight with movement at the ends, this is the size that does it.

Too big for anything above the shoulder. On short hair the section cannot get round the barrel far enough to set, and you end up dragging rather than shaping.

How it is measured

The three inches is the full diameter, bristle tip to bristle tip — the working size of the brush in your hand. Some brands quote the barrel alone and leave the bristles out, so a brush listed at three inches elsewhere may be considerably larger overall. Compare like with like before you decide a size is wrong for you.

What it is made of

Birch wood through the handle and barrel. Wood holds heat more gently than metal, so the section warms as you pass over it instead of taking the heat all at once.

Boar and nylon together, because one bristle cannot do both jobs. Boar sits close in structure to human hair and carries the scalp's own oil down the strand, which is why hair brushed with it looks conditioned without anything applied. Nylon is stiffer and does the gripping — it is what holds a thick section against the barrel while you pull.

How to use it

Dry the hair to about eighty per cent before the brush goes anywhere near it. A brush in soaking hair does nothing but stretch it.

Section properly. Nape first, working up, and keep the dryer pointing the same way the brush is travelling — down the hair shaft, never against it.

On long hair, lay the section across the bristles rather than winding it tight around the barrel. Tension comes from how you pull, not from how many times you wrap, and winding long hair around a barrel is how a brush ends up tangled in it.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out after every few uses. Hair wraps around the base of the bristles, and once it packs in there the bristles cannot flex. Most brushes are destroyed by neglect long before they wear out.

Do not soak it. Wood and water are a bad combination over time.

Where it came from

Peter Louis spent twenty-three years behind a chair in Manhattan — a salon on 57th Street, and years of blowouts before that, nine in the morning until ten at night. A supplier would bring a sample, it got used on clients, and it went back with a list of what was still wrong. That went on for years until one came back right.