Grooming basics
Brushing without breaking the coat
The brush matters less than the grip. Most breakage happens because the coat is being pulled from the wrong end.
3 min read
You can do real damage with an excellent brush and none at all with an ordinary one. Technique is the variable.
Line brushing, briefly
Hold the coat up with one hand and work in a horizontal line just below your grip, brushing the hair that falls free. Move your grip up a centimetre and repeat. You are always brushing a thin layer against nothing, rather than dragging a brush through the full depth of the coat.
It looks slow. It is faster than dematting.
Tip to root, never root to tip
When you hit a knot, start at the very end of the hair and work backwards in small bites. Pulling from the root drives the tangle tighter and snaps the strands above it.
Never brush a dry, damaged coat
If the coat is brittle, mist it with a hydrating leave-in first. Dry brittle hair under tension is exactly the condition under which it breaks — and breakage near the root is what produces that halo of short frizz that then tangles into everything else.
Match the tool to the depth
A pin brush moves through volume. A comb finds what the brush missed. Use the brush to open the coat and the comb to check your work — if the comb passes from skin to tip without catching, that section is genuinely done.
Finish at the skin
A coat that is smooth on the surface and matted underneath is a coat that will be worse next week. The comb has to reach the skin. That is the whole test.