How often should you brush your hair?

The secret to luscious locks depends on everything from your hair type to the design of your comb.

I've had hair straight down to the bottom of my back ever since I was old enough to decide how I wore my hair. Growing up, I brushed it at every chance I got: as soon as I woke up, every time I visited the bathroom, and even if I needed a break from homework.

I'd brush and brush, thinking of Empress Sisi of Austria in the 1800s, with straight brown hair like mine but all the way down to her ankles, who was said to keep hers healthy by giving it 100 brush strokes each night. (A story I believed religiously, until writing this article revealed, much to my disappointment, that it is likely an urban myth perpetuated by grandmothers around the world.)

Now that I'm grown, I give my hair a thorough brush when I shower, and that's about it. But it still looks and feels the same, at least from what I can tell. 

That's because, while the Victorian tales might hold some truth, the science behind how much you should brush your hair is definitely more tangled, and everybody from physicists to hairdressers is trying to comb through it. The answer depends on your hair type, your brush type, your routine, and more, so read on to find out how to properly brush your locks.

A brush through history

Combs and hairbrushes, and therefore the practice of hair grooming, date back to prehistoric times. "Humans have always used what they had to hand to create tools for both cleanliness and adornment, so brushing would have been important globally throughout history," says Rachael Gibson, founder of The Hair Historian.

The idea of 100 brushstrokes likely originated in the Victorian era, when women had very long hair due to the time's societal expectations: it was considered their "crowning glory" and an integral part of their femininity and worth, says Gibson. A grooming routine would generally involve going through the hair with a comb to detangle it, picking out debris, dirt, lice and head lice, then brushing through it with a hairbrush with natural bristles, usually made of boar hair, to smooth and condition the hair and distribute its oils. 

Aristocratic Victorian women would also have fancy capes to protect their clothes from plucked strays and a pot to collect them for later, when they'd make "dead hair doughnuts" to add structure and volume to hairstyles, says Gibson.

In 1898, Lyda Newman, an African American hairdresser from Ohio in the US, invented the first hairbrush with synthetic bristles, revolutionising the industry by making hairbrushes less expensive and easier to manufacture. This made hair brushing more common overall – and it was soon accompanied by strands of misinformation.

The tangled physics of hair

Consider the idea that frequent hair brushing increases hair growth. Over 46% of respondents in a 2025 survey still believed this claim. But that is a myth, according to Nikki Corzine, a hair salon owner in California, US. You cannot make your hair grow faster by brushing it more, says Corzine. 

Scientists who have devised formulas to precisely test the impact of grooming on hair damage, in fact, suggest that overbrushing can even cause some damage and hair loss.

One team of researchers created a test to mimic what happens when two hair strands loop around each other into a knot and are then pulled to untangle them. More combing caused hair to crack from the........

© BBC