Bombshell Cork Round Brush — 2.5″

The size most people should own. Two and a half inches is large enough to smooth a long section and small enough to still set a bend at the ends, which is why it does more of the work in a salon than any other round brush.

It suits hair from the shoulder down. If your hair is past mid-back, the three-inch smooths it faster. If it sits above the shoulder, go smaller.

How it is measured

The two and a half 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 the same size elsewhere may be considerably larger overall. Compare like with like before you decide a size is wrong for you.

The cork handle

Cork rather than lacquered wood. It is lighter, which matters when your arm is up for a whole head, and it does not turn slippery when your hands have product on them. A lacquered handle does.

It is also warm to hold, and it is a renewable material — cork is stripped from the bark of a living tree, which regrows. That was the point of the range.

The bristles

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 section against the barrel while you pull.

If you are only buying one

Buy this one. The three-inch is better at smoothing very long hair and the smaller sizes are better at setting a shape, but this is the size that does both adequately, and a brush you reach for every day beats a more specialised one that sits in a drawer.

How to use it

Dry to about eighty per cent before the brush goes near the hair. 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. On hair around the shoulder you can wind it, and that is how you set a bend at the ends rather than leaving them straight.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out from the base of the bristles after every few uses. Hair packs in around the roots and stops them flexing, and that is what kills a brush long before the bristles wear.

Do not soak it. Cork and standing water are a bad combination.

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.