Ultimate Nail Polish Tips: Everything You Need To Know

My Top Nail Tips

First of all, I did a whole post on how to achieve healthy and strong nails, so check that out if you want  tips on that and to find out my top products.

This post will be on specific tips: longwearing polish, diy matte nails, quicker drying times and fixing dried up polish. Hopefully you guys will find this really helpful!

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1. All you need to know about matte nails.

Matte nails is always a beautiful thing. Bored of your current nails? Just mattify them and transform them into a completely new look.

You can quickly and easily achieve matte nails by using steam. After painting your nails, boil some water and place your nails in the steam for quick and easy matte nails. However, clearly you have to be careful this, as you can easily burn yourself with steam. A much easier way is to simply paint your nails with two coats about 10 minutes before taking a shower. In the shower, the steam will matte your nails! This is a safer and easier way to achieve DIY matte nails.

Matte nails applied to an originally shiny nail polish!

Alternatively, use a matte topcoat.

These are my favourite matte nail polish topcoats. The Rimmel one is amazing for its price, around £5, and has a great big brush. The American Apparel one is more expensive and also works fine.

American Apparel Matte Top Coat, Rimmel London Pro Matte Finish Mattifying Topcoat

2. Basecoats

Quite simply, always use a basecoat.

My favourite basecoats: NYX ridge filler, OPI natural nail, and ORLY bonder

Basecoats prevent staining (especially with deep purples or reds, we all know how annoying and horrible-looking this permanent stain is), and mean you need less coats of the polish to create an opaque look, as well as giving you a smooth nail base and therefore a much better final look to your finished nail polish application.

Another note on basecoats- if you're using a polish that just isn't that pigmented and you want it to show up better, try painting a coat of white on first. It makes a huge difference, I promise.

OPI Nail Lacquer in White, Next nail polish in White from their French Manicure set

3. Fix dried up nail polish

One of the most annoying things is when your favourite nail polish becomes thick, clumpy and begins to dry out.

There is no way to properly prevent this, but when this happens there are two ways to fix it. Either buy a specialist thinner, I know seche do one which is specially designed for their topcoat seche vite, but will probably work on other polishes, or otherwise just add a bit of nail polish remover! It really thins the polish out and won't affect the quality of your polish. Bear in mind that this only works to an extent though.

4. Quicken drying time

I have a few tips on how to quicken the drying time of your nail polish. There's nothing more annoying than that feeling of being disabled for like 40 minutes after freshly painting your nails- we've all been there.

First quick tip is don't paint the layers too thick, and always wait at least ten minutes until the layer is dry before adding your second coat. If the nail polish isn't quite dry and you add another coat, it'll only make it more prone to smudging.

To quicken the drying time, straight after painting your nails plunge them into a bowl of ice water. Any cooler water works really, but they'll dry even quicker the colder the water is. Hold them there for a minute or a couple of minutes and they'll be rock hard and non-smudgable! 

Or use a specialist drying spray. Spray it on your nails and it hardens them much quicker.

5. Finally, quickly get rid of any overdrawn nail polish on the skin around your nails

Easier than using a q-tip dipped in polish remover- just wash your hands with warm water and it kind of lifts up the product on your skin, it works amazingly. Or try this in the shower, and most will go.

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Did you find this post useful? What are your top nail tips? Let me know in the comments below.