8 Tricks on Properly Cleaning Your Hair Tools ...

A quick way to clean your hair tools, including flat irons and curling irons, is to use some water. Grab a microfiber cloth -- which you can pick up at stores like Target or home stores -- and dab a little bit of water to clean off the outer area of the tool, including the inside of the barrel of your curling iron and the plates on your flat iron. The microfiber cloth is soft and can be used on delicate surfaces so it won’t scratch up your hair tools and ruin them.

While you’re cleaning your hair tools, you might notice that there are some extra stubborn areas with lots of dirt, hair oil or hair products; water just might not be enough. In those instances, grab some baking soda and water (enough to make a paste) and rub it on your curling or flat iron with your fingers, a Q-tip or a soft toothbrush to really get in between the crevices. Rinse off the paste, dry and leave it happy and clean!

While we’re learning how to clean hair tools, let’s not forget our blow dryer! Blow dryers can be very costly to replace, so it’s important to keep the back vent clean and clear of any debris so it continues running smoothly. Check out the back vent of your hair dryer, you’re probably going to see a gathering of dust bunnies. Grab some tweezers and simply tweeze the dust out. If there isn’t enough dust to pick up with tweezers, use your vacuum to suck out all the dust!

Another way to clean hair tools, or in this case the blow dryer, is to grab a towel and wipe off the vent. This tip is for those who don’t own a hand-vac or a vacuum with a small attachment to get all the debris out of the back vent. Grab any old towel, cloth or soft toothbrush and wipe or brush off whatever gunk you see back there. If we neglect the vent on our hair dryer, it can cause the motor to overheat and it can end up breaking the dryer altogether. Keeping it clean is pretty quick and easy, so make sure you keep it up!

Another quick and simple tip on how to clean hair tools, especially hair brushes, is to cut out the hair. I know it sounds weird but if your brush has tons of hair in it, instead of just picking it out with your fingers where we always seem to leave strands behind, use a pen to loosen and lift the hair up from the brush and then use scissors to cut the hair out (avoid cutting any bristles). If you have lots of product and oil in your brush, see the next tip.

Another way to clean hair tools and give them a good cleansing is to wash them. This only applies to hair brushes and some hair diffusers though, don’t try it with any heat tools. First, get any excess strands of hair out of the brush, then fill up a sink with warm water and a few drops of shampoo. Wash your brush with your hands or swirl it around in the sudsy water for a couple of minutes. Then, take a comb and comb the brush to get out any leftover dirt or hair. After you give it a final rinse, let the excess water drip off, then dry off the handle and back of brush. Finally, hang your brush with the bristles facing down over the sink.

We didn’t forget about combs on this list of tips on cleaning your hair tools! Combs need and deserve a good cleaning as much as the next hair tool. The easiest way to clean a dirty comb is to soak it in a mug with warm water and shampoo, very similar to the step above. If your hair is oily, instead of using water and shampoo, try soaking your comb in mug of white vinegar to get rid of excess oils.

The focus of this post is on how to clean hair tools but you should also periodically inspect them to make sure they’re still in good shape. If you use a brush, comb or basically any styling tool that has broken parts or bristles that are splitting or coming apart, it’s time to for a new one. Using a hair tool that’s super old or has broken parts can split your hair or cause it to break!

This quickie guide on how to clean hair tools can help you keep your favorite styling tools around much longer. I know we're busy and it’s easy to forget to clean our styling tools, but using clean tools really makes a difference in how our hair looks and feels. Who wants to redistribute all the junk that’s in our hair onto our brush and back into our clean hair?! How often do you clean your hair tools? Do you have any tips on keeping them clean?

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