Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Brush #12 vs. Brush #14 vs. Brush #7B

Anastasia Beverly Hills makes some of the best brow products currently on the market. Their brushes are no exception, with the #12 brush being a well-loved tool by many. However, I noticed that ABH also sold another brush, the #14, which is very similar to the #12. I was intrigued by it but could not find anything online comparing the two. So, I took it upon myself to investigate and see what the differences are between these two brushes. If you’re interested in finding out which brush is better, or wtf is the difference between the two, please keep reading! 2020 Update: this blog post now includes a comparison between the ABH #12 and #14 brushes with the #7B brush!

Overview

The #12 brush is the more popular of the two. It retails for $23 CAD and can be purchased from a variety of retailers which carry Anastasia Beverly Hills, including their website, Sephora, and Nordstrom. The #14 brush, however, retails for $24 CAD and can only be purchased from the Sephora website in Canada, but it is also available on the Macy’s website in the US. Oddly enough, the #14 brush doesn’t show up on the Anastasia Beverly Hills website.

The brushes themselves are extremely similar, and going off images found on the internet, they are barely distinguishable from one another. Perhaps the #14 brush may look slightly smaller than the #12 brush in pictures, but apart from that, there aren’t any crazy differences. In person, however, it is clear that the #12 brush is much thicker and a little wider than the #14 brush.

The #14 brush is much more fine and seems like a better candidate for more precise line work.

Performance

I used both brushes with the Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade to see how they work with product. As I suspected, the #12 brush creates more of a thick and harsh line since it’s more densely packed and is wider than the #14 brush. The #14 brush creates very fine lines which aren’t too intense. Although it’s thinner and smaller, it has firm bristles which would work very well for creating strokes mimicking brow hairs.

Strokes by ABH brow brushes: #12 on left; #14 on right

To wrap it up, I would say that both brushes are excellent, however you definitely don’t need both. I personally prefer the #14 brush over the #12 brush when using the Dipbrow pomade simply because it prevents you from making your brows too intense. However, with a brow powder, I prefer the #12 brush since it is more dense and thick and can pick up and apply powders more effectively.

2020 Update

It’s been about 4 years since I made this post. I’m happy to say that I still have these two brushes in my collection, and I finally decided to complete my ABH brow brush collection with the addition of the #7B brush!

The Anastasia Beverly Hills #7B brush is essentially the love child of the #12 brush and the #14 brush: it has the width of the #12 brush with the precision of the #14 brush.

The #7B brush is very fine, making it more suitable for pomades rather than powder (in my opinion, anyway). I noticed that the bristles on the #7B brush were quite stiff in comparison to the #12 and #14 brushes, but that could also just be a result of the other brushes being much older and more well loved.

Strokes by ABH brow brushes using ABH Dipbrow in Medium Brown

 

What are your favourite brow brushes?

Have your tried any of these brushes out?

Let me know in the comments!