Real Techniques

Real Techniques is an American makeup-tool brand founded in 2011 and headquartered in Gurnee, Illinois [1]. It specialises in makeup brushes and blending sponges rather than cosmetics, positioning affordable, synthetic tools as an alternative to premium accessory brands. The line grew out of the early-2010s YouTube beauty scene, and it is sold in more than 60 countries [2]. It remains active, with a current e-commerce catalogue and recent editorial recognition in 2024 and 2026.

The brand is one of the more visible products of the era when YouTube makeup artists began shaping mainstream beauty. Its public identity has long been tied to the British sisters behind it, though the corporate origins sit with an American accessories company.

Real Techniques began in 2011 as a collaboration between the accessories company Paris Presents Incorporated and Samantha and Nicola Chapman, two British makeup artists known on YouTube through their channel Pixiwoo [3][4]. According to the account on Samantha Chapman's Wikipedia entry, Paris Presents approached the sisters around 2010 to develop an affordable makeup-brush line to accompany the techniques they demonstrated online, and the first collection launched the following year [5].

Sources differ on how to describe that founding. Several trade and press accounts credit the Chapman sisters as the founders of Real Techniques, while Wikipedia frames Paris Presents as the originator that contracted them to design the range. In practice the brand was Paris Presents intellectual property built in collaboration with the sisters, whose faces and following became its public identity through the 2010s.

By 2016 the brand marked its fifth birthday with a packaging refresh and new brushes, including a brow set and a brush-cleansing palette. In 2017 the Chapman sisters were named YouTubers of the Year at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards in London, an award tied to their role as the faces of Real Techniques [4]. The following year the company ran an unusual promotion, using a helium balloon to send a brush set to an altitude of roughly 36,000 metres and describing itself as the first makeup-brush brand sent into space [6].

The Chapmans' involvement ended in 2020, when the sisters concluded their nine-year partnership with the brand's owner [7]. Around the same period Samantha Chapman announced that she was stepping back from professional beauty content.

Real Techniques' parent company is Paris Presents Incorporated, which also trades as PPI Beauty and owns the accessory brand EcoTools and the mask brand Freeman Beauty [7]. In August 2018 Paris Presents was acquired by the private-equity firm Yellow Wood Partners from EagleTree Capital, after which it was combined with Yellow Wood's existing holding, Freeman Beauty [8]. A founding partner of Yellow Wood framed the deal around shared "millennial, gen z and multicultural consumers" between the accessory and mask businesses.

The company describes Real Techniques as "the brand of choice for all makeup users, no matter your level of expertise," and says the tools were created with leading makeup artists to "take the mystery out of choosing beauty tools." Its stated aim, summarised on the brand's about page, is professional-quality results made accessible regardless of skill level, under the phrase "quality without compromise." The consumer-facing tagline is "performance without the price tag," signalling a deliberately affordable, drugstore price position.

The catalogue centres on two categories: makeup brushes and blending sponges. The brand lists its top sellers as the Miracle Complexion Sponge, the Bubble Blending Makeup Brush and the Everyday Essentials Makeup Brush Set. Brushes are made from synthetic Taklon fibre with hand-cut heads [5], and the company markets its sponges as using a latex-free foam. A later product, the Makeupsaver Sponge, is promoted with what the company calls fingerprint technology to reduce absorption, which it says is "lab proven to save up to 90%" of the makeup applied.

The Miracle Complexion Sponge in particular became widely discussed in beauty media and blogs as an inexpensive alternative to the higher-priced Beautyblender [9]. Real Techniques states that its products are vegan and cruelty-free, dermatologist tested and suitable for sensitive skin.

The brand and its founders have received several forms of recognition. Beyond the 2017 Glamour award, Real Techniques was named number one in makeup brushes at the 2018 ChickAdvisor Reviewers' Choice Awards, and its Brightening Concealer Brush received a Shop TODAY Beauty Award in 2024. In 2026 the review site Reviewed.com named the Everyday Essentials set its best overall pick in a makeup-brush roundup [10].

Real Techniques remains active. Its e-commerce site carries a current product range, it is distributed in more than 60 countries, and it continues to appear in editorial coverage, most recently in 2026.