After brushing your hair with the same brush for a while, you may start to notice some odd things in your brush.
Besides hair that’s pulled from your head, you might also notice little, fuzzy, dots or strands within the brush.
It’s lint.
Considering you don’t have lint in your hair, you may wonder how it’s gotten into your brush.
Here’s what you need to know about lint and what it’s doing in your hairbrush.
Why Is There Lint In My Hairbrush?
The lint you see in your hairbrush is a combination of oil, dead skin cells, hair products, matted hair, and dust.
When you brush your hair, you pull loose hair strands from your head.
When you brush your hair deep and scrape against your skull, you’re also pulling away dead skin cells and oil.
If you use hair products, that’s also getting smeared on your brush.
These ingredients, alone, can make you see lint-like objects in your brush.
If you leave your hairbrush out in the open, dust also collects on your hairbrush.
It gets stuck in the lint-like mixture and makes it appear even more like lint.
As such, a lack of hygiene, lack of cleaning your brush, and lack of proper storage all add lint to your hairbrush.
Let’s examine these factors in more detail.
1. Dead Skin Cells
You’ll start to see lint in your hairbrush when you don’t clean your hair as well as you should.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you should clean your hair more often.
Rather, it means that when you do clean your hair, you need to make sure that you’re cleaning it as well as you can.
Your skull is not a clean place.
Like the rest of your skin, it has dead skin cells on it.
It’s obvious when you have dead skin cell problems on other parts of your skin because you might develop acne or other skin problems.
It’s less obvious to see if you have problems with your scalp because you can’t see it.
Everyone has dead skin cells on their skin.
It’s a natural process in which your body sheds old cells to make new ones.
You want your body to produce new skin cells because that’s what makes your body look youthful.
If it didn’t produce new skin cells, you’d have areas of dry, patchy, and wrinkled skin.
The problem with dead skin cells is that they’re not always easy to remove.
If you don’t scrub your scalp well enough in the shower or bath, then they’re going to remain on your scalp.
Even if you do scrub them, if you’re not good at rinsing your hair, then the cells are just stuck in your hair instead.
This is where your hairbrush comes into play.
When you brush your hair, it’s collecting all those dead skin cells.
They end up sticking together and forming a sticky mass that other things can stick to.
If you don’t regularly clean your brush, then the dead skin cells can make it start to smell.
You have lint on your hairbrush because dust sticks to the dead skin cells.
You might also be mistaking lint for dead skin cells.
2. Hair Product
Another reason you have lint in your hairbrush is that you use hair products.
Hair products are useful for keeping your hair in place, giving it some volume, or even making it look shiny and fresh.
The bad thing about hair products is that they can stick to your hair or scalp for a long time.
Even after they have stopped holding your hair in place or making it look voluminous, it can still be present in your hair.
This becomes a problem when you don’t wash your hair after using a product.
You don’t always need to use shampoo to wash out the product from your hair.
Sometimes a simple rinse will do.
However, in some cases, you may need to pull out the heavy-duty shampoo to give your hair some life after using a hair product.
If you don’t rinse your hair well enough, some of that product may still be in your hair.
As a result, when you brush your hair, the hairbrush collects it in two different ways.
The first is that the bristles of the brush end up smearing the product on its bristles.
This can become annoying, especially if you brush deep into your hair.
The product may end up going deep into the bristles.
The other way is that it pulls or removes hair from your scalp.
That hair might have the product on them.
As a result, dust can collect on the brush and stick to the product.
If you have dead skin cells on the brush, too, then the hair product can make it even stickier.
You may see lint, but it might also just be dead skin cells and hair products massed together.
3. Oil
It’s natural to have oil in your hair and on your skin.
Oil helps keep your skin lubricated.
Without it, your skin would become dry and start to crack.
Besides the fact that it is easier to cut, having dry skin can also be irritating.
Oil also helps nourish your hair and keeps it shiny and healthy.
The problem with oil is that some people produce too much of it.
As a result, the oil makes their hair look greasy.
If you brush your hair with oily hair, you can be sure that the oil is going to end up spreading along the brush, too.
This is another reason why you see lint in your hairbrush.
The oil makes it easier for the dust to stick to the hairbrush.
Oil can also mix with dead skin cells and hair products to create a mixture that looks like lint.
Oil can be difficult to get rid of since your body produces it naturally.
It’s also important not to get rid of oil entirely since your body does need it.
By reducing oil, however, your hairbrush will pick up less of it which means dust will have a harder time sticking to your hairbrush.
4. Matted Hair
Even if your hair doesn’t have any oil or hair products in it, you’ll find that your hairbrush will start to get full of matted hair.
This is common and normal since the hairbrush pulls away hair that has fallen loose from your scalp.
The hair becomes stuck in the hairbrush.
If you don’t clean out your hairbrush, the hair remains there.
If you continue not to clean it, despite using it every day, more and more hair gets added to the brush.
Since you apply pressure to a brush as you use it, you end up pushing the hair strands altogether.
They form a thick mat of hair.
This causes lint to form in your hairbrush because the thick mat of hair is essentially like a cobweb.
Dust collects on the hair and forms lint.
You see it because it’s trapped within the mat of hair.
5. You Don’t Clean Or Replace Your Hairbrush
Another big reason why you get lint in your hairbrush is that you don’t clean your hairbrush as often as you should.
Because you may think that your hair is clean, you probably don’t do much with your hairbrush after using it.
You may simply put it back on the table where it belongs.
This is a problem.
By not cleaning your hairbrush, you’re letting that mixture of dead skin cells, oil, hair products, and dust all dry together.
This problem is even worse when you’re brushing your hair throughout the day.
When you brush unclean hair, then that’s more goop and dead skin cells adding to the brush.
It also means you’re brushing that back into your hair.
You see lint on your brush because you’re not taking the time to clean your hairbrush.
If you pulled the hair from your brush regularly and sanitized it, then you wouldn’t see lint in your hairbrush.
6. Improper Storage Of Your Hairbrush
A final reason why you see lint in your hairbrush is that you’re not storing it correctly.
Lint and dust get attracted to static electricity.
Your hairbrush is capable of generating static electricity because it comes into contact with your hair.
Your hair is also capable of storing static electricity.
When you brush the hairbrush through your hair, you’re potentially charging the bristles.
Lint and dust get attracted to the charges and settle in your hairbrush.
You can stop that from happening by ensuring lint and dust can’t get attracted to the brush.
There’s not much you can do about static electricity, but you can block access to your hairbrush.
After brushing your hair, you can store it in an enclosed box where lint and dust cannot settle on it.
If you just set your hairbrush out in the open, you’re allowing dust to settle on it.
Because it likely has some charge from static electricity, lint and dust are going to find your hairbrush with ease.
Why Is Lint In Your Hairbrush Bad For You?
Lint in your hairbrush is bad because it defeats the purpose of keeping your hair clean.
Oily hair, smelly skin, and skin irritation are some of the reasons why leaving the lint in your hairbrush is bad for you.
Let’s examine those reasons in more detail.
1. Oily Hair
If you don’t clean the lint from your hairbrush, you’re reapplying oil to your hair.
That isn’t necessarily a good thing because it’s old oil that’s caked in other substances.
You might also be smearing oil with hair products or oil with bacteria.
Bacteria is a real concern when brushing your hair with a linty hairbrush.
When you brush your hair with an oily and linty hairbrush, you end up making your hair greasier.
The result is an unpleasant and greasy-looking residue that settles on your hair.
If you keep washing your hair and wondering why it won’t stop looking greasy, the problem may be with your hairbrush.
2. Smelly Scalp
There may come a time when you brush your hair only to discover that your head doesn’t smell great.
Even if you used shampoo or conditioner, there may be an underlying odor that’s unpleasant.
The reason is your linty hairbrush.
The dead skin cells, lint, oil, and hair products all mix to create an unpleasant mixture.
Bacteria also gets into that mixture.
Each time you brush your hair, you’re also brushing that bacteria through your strands.
It comes into contact with your skin where the bacteria lives better.
As it grows and breeds, it starts to emit an odor.
By removing the lint from your hairbrush, you can make your head and skin smell better.
3. Skin Irritation
A final reason why lint is bad in your hairbrush is that it can cause skin irritation.
When you have things like dead skin cells, oil, hair products, lint, and old hair matted together, you’re making a breeding ground for bacteria.
That’s even more true if you leave your hairbrush in an open area in the bathroom where there’s plenty of warmth, moisture, and steam for bacteria to grow.
When you brush your hair, you’re scratching that into your skin.
The bacteria get on or into your skin and cause irritation because your body is trying to fight off the invasion.
You might break out in hives, have a rash, or even get acne.
Removing the lint from your hairbrush can help reduce skin irritation.
Conclusion
Lint congregates on a hairbrush due to the excess oil, hair products, and dead skin cells left behind on the hairbrush.
When you don’t clean and sanitize your hairbrush often enough, it makes the hairbrush sticky enough that it easily traps lint and dust.
By removing lint, you can keep your hair and scalp healthier.
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