Bombshell Paddle Brush — Long Round Handle, 10¾”

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 and shine, it is.

The long round handle

This is the longest brush in the range at ten and three quarter inches, and the handle is turned round rather than flattened.

A round handle rolls in the hand. That matters more than it sounds: brushing your own long hair means changing the angle constantly as you work round the back of your head, and a flat handle has to be gripped and regripped to do it. A round one turns in your fingers. Over a full head of long hair that is the difference between an easy few minutes and an aching wrist.

The extra length also gets the head of the brush to the back of your own head without your elbow having to go somewhere uncomfortable.

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.

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.

On dry hair, long slow passes from root to end. This is a detangling and smoothing brush rather than a polishing one — the nylon glides through and lays the length down. If it is shine you are after, that is what the boar brushes in this range are for.

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.