Bombshell Paddle Brush — Large, 9.5″

A paddle brush does a different job from a round brush, and confusing the two is why people end up disappointed with both.

A round brush shapes. It puts a bend or a curl into hair by wrapping it round a barrel under heat. A paddle does the opposite — it flattens, smooths and detangles across a wide flat surface. If you want volume or movement, this is not the brush. If you want long hair to lie down, it is.

The flat handle

Nine and a half inches with a flat handle, which is the difference between this and the long round-handled paddle.

A flat handle sits still in the hand. You hold it at one angle and it stays there, which is what you want for long straight passes down the length — and what most people find more natural if they are used to an ordinary hairbrush. The round handle is better if you are working round the back of your own head and changing angle constantly. Neither is better in general; they suit different hands and different habits.

Everything else about the two brushes is the same.

The bristles

Nylon, not boar. Nylon is stiffer and smoother, and it glides through a tangle where boar would catch in it. That is the right choice for a paddle, because a paddle is covering a lot of hair in one pass and its job is to get through the length cleanly rather than to polish the surface.

If shine is what you are after, that is what the boar brushes in this range are for.

The cushion

The bristles sit in a flexible cushioned pad rather than a solid back. The pad gives as the brush passes over the curve of the skull, so the bristles stay in contact instead of skidding off the high points, and any snag lifts the pad rather than pulling at the hair.

It is also the part that will fail first if you abuse it. Do not press hard. A paddle brush is not a tool you lean on.

How to use it

Start at the ends, not the roots. Take the bottom two inches, work the tangles out of those, then move up an inch and repeat. Working from the top down drags every tangle in the length into one knot at the bottom, which is where breakage comes from.

Be gentler on wet hair. Hair is at its most fragile wet, and a wide brush covers a lot of it at once.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out of the pad regularly. On a paddle it collects between the bristle rows and packs down into a mat, which stops the pad flexing and takes the point out of the whole design.

Do not soak it. Water gets into the cushion, and it does not come back out.

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.