Bars, Liquid, Spot cleaners: Which one to use.

 Answer: Depends how many brushes and what kind of brushes that need to be cleaned. 

Just remember, I'm writing this from my experience with various brush cleaners. Ultimately, it all comes down to your decision.

 

Cleansing Bars and Bar Soap:

Pros:

• If you just need to consistently need to clean one or a few brushes at a time
• Last a long time
  
• Easy to store

Cons:

• Not all cleansing bars do a good job at cleaning brushes.

 Personal Experience:

    I prefer to use brush cleansing bars on my brushes because it gets the job done much more efficiently. I bought a cleansing bar specifically formulate just for natural hair brushes, the Hakuhodo soap, and I currently have Beauty Blender's Charcoal Solid and Juno&co "Clean Up You Act" solid cleansing bar to use on my synthetic brushes.

I have had success with using any bar soap, like Dr Bronner's castille bar soap and Ivory bar soap, but it takes longer to rinse and to clean my foundation brushes. However, I know that I have hard water, so the bars started leaving residue on all my brushes, and slowly drying out my natural hair brushes.

Personal Favorite: Hakuhodo Soap (solely for natural hair brushes)

Liquid soaps (I'm mainly talking about Castille soap):

 Pros:

• Ideally use to wash a whole bunch of brushes at a time
• Lasts a long time
  

Cons:

• May not rinse will depending on how hard your water is 
• Can easily use too much. Must dilute!
  

Personal Experience:

    When I first started wearing makeup, I used Dr Bronner's Liquid castille soap in peppermint to was my synthetic brushes. It worked really well! But when I unknowingly purchased a natural-hair brush, the diluted castille soap concoction really dried it out. 

   A note that I've never tried using Dawn dish soap to wash my brushes.

 Personal Favorite: Dawn Dishwashing Dish Soap

 

Spot Cleaners:

Pros:

• Extremely convenient
• Very good for switching colors 
• Prolongs when you have to deep clean the brushes

Cons:

• Not effective on brushes that were used with cream products
• Contains alcohol, so it'll eventually damage your natural hair brushes 
• Still have to deep clean your brushes

 Personal Experience:

    I would recommend getting this if you like to play with makeup or like to switch up your looks on the daily basis. I've used the Cinema Secrets Makeup Brush Cleaner Pro and it's really effective on fluffy brushes, like crease brushes. I had to use alot of it to get foundation and concealer out of my brushes. I would never use these on my natural hair brushes since spot cleaners contain alcohol.

Personal Favorite: None. 

 What is deep cleaning? It's washing your brushes with cleaning bar or soap, and water. Spot cleaners usually have a conditioning agent in them, so it'll eventually affect your brushes performance. Because of that, that's why we still need to deep clean our brushes. But it does extend how often we have to do it!