When it comes to summer looks, subtlety is key. Even if you’re working with brighter shades of makeup, you want to make sure everything is perfectly blended. After all, with longer daylight hours, smudges and creases are going to stand out that much more. So what you want to do is find yourself a set of high-quality hand-knotted brushes. But these bad boys don’t come cheap—something that Savannah Olsen knows all about. She’s the head makeup artist at Kiss & Makeup (in West Van’s Park Royal Village), a boutique-y beauty bar that carries all your favourite brands.

“Brushes are definitely an investment,” Olsen admits. “But if you do pay that extra for good brushes, they will last you for years. And it’s definitely going to make a difference in how natural or how professional the makeup looks, even when you’re keeping it quite simple.”

Olsen recently gave the Straight a private demo on how the right brush can make all the difference. She gave one blond model an evening bronzy glow—risky on a fair-skinned woman simply because we tend to look bruised if the bronzer isn’t diffused enough. And on another model, Olsen did a peachy-fresh day look. Again, peach blush can be a little too fruity if it’s not feathered out properly.

Here, then, are Olsen’s top-five brush picks.

Foundation Brush
Olsen always reaches for a synthetic brush when she’s applying foundation, because natural brushes and sponges absorb a lot of the moisture from her product. “You’re going to waste a lot of product before you actually start seeing any of it on your face,” says Olsen, who uses the big, slightly rounded CARGO #20 foundation brush ($32). “And if you’re using the same sponge over and over, it’s going to harbour a lot of bacteria, but if you throw out a sponge every time, you’re being quite wasteful.”

Powder Brush
To set foundation with loose powder or apply bronzer, Olsen suggests using a big fluffy brush made from natural hair—otherwise you run the risk of putting on too much bronzing product and looking like a fake ’n’ bake victim. “If I used a really tiny brush for the bronzer, it’s going to be quite spotty, whereas the bigger, fluffier brush is going to give a softer kind of look because it blends out better,” says Olsen, who prefers the Stila #8 ($59). “It’s going to pick up the colour better, and it will feel nicer.”

Eyebrow Brush
For brow tips that tend to trail off, Olsen dips her somewhat coarse CARGO small-angle brush ($18) into a bit of brow shadow to thicken them up. “What you want to look for in an eyebrow brush is that it’s quite firm, so that it’s not flopping over, which will kind of smush things out [of the brow line]. This one’s natural, but you can use synthetic, too. You want it to be quite thin so you can use it on the end of the brow, which is a little finer [than the rest of the brow].”

Eyeliner Brush
For softer, summery eyes, it’s always nice to stay away from hard lines. But at the same time, you still want definition around your lashes. That’s why Olsen recommends the square-headed Stila #13 One Step Eyeliner Brush ($26), the perfect applicator for pots of smudge liner. “So you go into your product and then you stamp it along [the lash line],” Olsen says. “For someone who’s really scared of doing lines or thinks they’re going to do a really bumpy line, they can use a brush like this with gel liner and it just looks like [they have] a nice thick base at the lashes.”

Eye shadow Brush
Right now, Olsen swears by the CARGO #5 all-purpose eye shadow brush ($28). It’s got a rounded tip to fit in the crease but it’s quite firm, so you can apply shadow down on your lid. “If someone was to get one eye shadow brush, this is what it should look like,” Olsen says, pointing to her trusty brush. “You can take your powder and it’s quite thin, so you can pat it in and you then can blend it out.”