Sheila Stotts Untangle Brush Review: The Hairbrush Hiding in Every Celebrity Stylist's Kit
Every celebrity hairstylist already knows about this one. After years of testing detanglers on waist-length hair, it's the only one I still reach for.
Disclaimer: I do use affiliate links in this blog meaning that if you purchase anything through my affiliate links I receive commission at no additional cost to you! I only recommend products that I have heavily researched, tested and loved, and/or used for several years.
I am terrible at keeping a surprise, so I'm giving this one away early.
There's a hairbrush that sits on the station of nearly every celebrity hairstylist in Los Angeles, and almost nobody outside the industry has heard of it. I go to two celebrity salons—Sally Hershberger and Andy LeCompte—and I have never once been to either without spotting a Sheila Stotts brush at every single station.
Once you know what you're looking for, you start seeing them everywhere. Watch an A-lister's GRWM video closely enough and there it is, sitting on the counter, unlabelled and unremarked on.
This is that brush.
Sheila Stotts is a celebrity hair artist with a career spanning more than forty-five years. The brushes came out of that time behind the chair—they're tools designed by someone solving her own problems at work, rather than a beauty brand designing a product for a shelf.
That origin shows in the details, which I'll get to. It also explains why the brand has stayed relatively quiet while being everywhere professionally. It grew through stylists, not marketing.
Quick context on my hair: it's Rapunzel-length, and it's all mine—thanks to my Japanese genes. Long, dense, real hair. If you also have long hair, you know that brushing it wet is a genuinely high-stakes activity. The wrong brush doesn't just hurt. It rips through knots, snaps strands, and drags at your scalp. Every long-haired person has had a Princess Diaries "you broke my brush" moment, and mine have mostly involved cheap detanglers giving up somewhere around the mid-lengths.
I have tried every kind of detangling brush there is. Flexible ones. Bristle ones. The ones shaped like a pebble. None of them come close to this for my post-shower routine.
The Untangle brush has metal bristles rather than plastic ones. Eleven rows of fine, needle-like metal teeth set into a plastic body. I know how that sounds. Metal, on wet hair, on your scalp—it reads as the opposite of gentle. In practice it's the reverse, for two reasons:
The metal is anti-static. Plastic bristles generate static as they move through hair, which is a large part of why brushing can leave long hair frizzy and flyaway. Metal doesn't. On dense hair especially, the difference is immediate.
They glide instead of grabbing. The teeth are fine enough that they pass through tangles rather than catching and dragging, which means you can brush with far less pressure. Less pressure is the whole game when it comes to avoiding breakage.
There's also a small design detail I love, which tells you it was made by someone who actually uses these brushes: there's a drainage hole in the body of the brush. It's built to be used in the shower, and the hole stops water pooling inside and wrecking it. That's a working stylist's thought, not a product designer's.
Post-shower is where this earns its place. That's the moment your hair is most fragile and most tangled at once—the worst possible combination, and where a bad brush does the most damage.
You can also use it in the shower itself, which is what the drainage hole is for. It works for distributing conditioner through the lengths and for shampooing, where the metal teeth do something genuinely nice: a proper scalp massage. It's the closest thing to the head massage at the salon that I've found at home, and it leaves my scalp feeling clean in a way that fingers alone don't manage. The metal bristles exfoliate the scalp and remove buildup. As I always say, double whammy!
There are two versions, and this confused me at first, so here's the distinction.
The metal-bristled Untangle — the one I have and everything above refers to is officially the Removal Brush. It's the wet, detangling, in-and-post-shower tool.
The Untangle Wood is the Application Brush, designed for distributing product and working with dry hair.
I'm eyeing the wooden one next for my dry hair days. If you're buying one to start with and your main problem is post-shower tangles, get the metal.
This is a luxury tool and it's priced like one. It costs substantially more than the Wet brush detangler you'd grab at the drugstore, and I want to be straight about that rather than gloss over it.
Two honest thoughts on whether that's justified.
If you have fine, short, or easily-managed hair, you probably don't need this. A cheap detangler will do the job and you won't feel the difference. There's no version of this review where I tell you everyone needs a professional-grade brush.
But if you have long, thick, or easily-tangled hair—I truly believe this is one of the best investments money can buy. I'd bought and abandoned a graveyard of detanglers before this one. Spending more once on the tool the professionals actually use has worked out better than that did, both for my hair and, eventually, for my money.
This is the best detangling brush I've used, and I've used a lot of them. It's the one I reach for every day after a shower, and it's the reason brushing my hair stopped being something I braced for. If you have long hair and you've been quietly accepting that detangling just hurts—it doesn't have to!
Shop the Sheila Stotts Untagle Brush (for wet hair) and Wooden Untagle Brush (for dry hair) below!
