Modify Your Denman Brush To Make It Gentler On Your Hair

The Denman brush* is like the Holy Grail to many women with coily/kinky*/curly hair. It’s the tool that gets the job done, the curls defined or the product evenly distributed.

It’s the magic wand, the frizz destroyer, the…OK, let me calm down a moment. It’s a brush for goodness sake!! A darned brush that most naturals either have in their bathroom or, at the least, heard of.

Put it this way: If there was a kit to be given out to every new natural, it would be front and center with a spray bottle, bobby pins*, carrier oil, essential oils* and a satin bonnet*. Yea, it’s that revered by naturals!

What is it?

The Denman traditional styling brush D3 is a 7-row medium brush. Features an anti-static rubber pad with close-set nylon pins that provide maximum grip and control during blow drying.

There are slight variations (Denman has one brush with 5 rows of pins and another with 9 rows of pins) but the D3 is the most popular and the only one any natural I personally know has.

It’s sold at most beauty supply stores but there are many knock-offs and I’ve heard they work just as well as the real thing. Despite its overwhelming popularity, there are many naturals who have a love/hate relationship with the brush for two reasons:

• It can yank the heck out of your hair and you could end up with tons of broken pieces in the brush.
• It creates a lot of frizz.

I’m one of the many who has a love/hate relationship with it. I haven’t used mine in a year and it sits in my bathroom closet collecting dust and being neglected. I didn’t like how it handled my hair, it gripped a little too much for my taste so I stopped using it so I went cold-turkey.

I know many still love it and since it’s still so popular I wasn’t too surprised when I came across this video by AGrlCanMAC about altering it and making it gentler to natural hair.

To modify your Denman brush, essentially all you have to do is remove a few rows (every other one) and doing this reduces the density of the bristles making it easier to detangle your natural hair with.

Aha! That’s all I had to do? Well, AGrlCanMAC did this with a knock-off brand and mentioned that she thought it would be slightly harder to dismantle a real Denman brush*.

Well, worry not Naturals because I’m here to dispel that notion. I did exactly what she prescribed with my real Denman brush with relative ease and using the same process.

So if you only kinda like the brush and feel it doesn’t work as well,  then try this trick. It’s easy to put the rows of nylon pins right back in if you change your mind so don’t worry about ruining the brush.

Even if you love it, I would suggest at least giving this a try to see if it works better for you. Now, there’s no guarantee that this will become a wonder brush for you by any means but it’s worth the effort if you are like me and it’s just sitting in your bathroom closet unused.

Cleaning Your Denman Brush

While I was checking out this way to alter the brush to work more effectively I came across some great ways to clean your brush. I’ve always just cleaned my brush with shampoo but struggled with getting in between the teeth.

I usually used another brush in the house to clean it by brushing the pins from each brush together with shampoo and water. I feel kind of silly after I saw the PROPER way to clean your Denman brush*.

There are two ways that are sure to get all the product, stray hairs, dust, and anything else those brushes can accumulate in them over time.

► Buy the official Denman Cleaning Brush. It’s a two-ended cleaning brush from Denman specifically made to clean other brushes. It claims it clean dust and fluff and the pointed ends is for removing loose hairs. The stiff bristles can get through any hairbrush without causing any damage to the pins. This is actually the quickest way to clean your Denman brush.

► Take the brush apart completely and soak or wash the pad and pins in soapy (shampoo) water. Now you take the brush apart as you would if you wanted to remove a few rows of the pins when making your brush gentler but this time you take them all out.

Brush all the loose hairs away before placing the pad and the pins in the water to clean them. Rinse them off and allow them to dry separately before replacing the pins and the pad into the brush handle. This method takes much longer than using the cleaning brush above but will stilll remove all dirt, product and stray hairs.

In Conclusion….

Whether you like it or hate it the Denman brush* is here to stay as it’s a favorite with many naturals so try removing a few rows of pins to see if you like it better and you may want to invest in the cleaning brush for quick cleans or try the longer method which is sure to clean it completely too.

Now, do you like the Denman (or hate it) and why?