Bombshell Birch Wood Round Brush — 1.75″

The smallest round brush in the range, and the one for short hair. At an inch and three quarters the section wraps far enough round the barrel to genuinely set, which is what gives a bob its shape and a fringe its direction rather than just drying it flat.

It is also the brush for the parts of a longer head of hair the big ones cannot reach cleanly — the fringe, the sides, the short pieces around the face. Plenty of people with long hair own this alongside a larger one for exactly that.

How it is measured

The inch and three quarters 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.

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 section against the barrel while you pull.

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.

Wind the section around the barrel. That is what a small barrel is for, and it is how you set a curl or a bend into a shorter cut. The risk of the brush catching is low because there is not much length to catch.

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.