Painting Your Nails At Home? The Real Reason It Never Lasts As Long As The Pro's + Their Best Tips

For full disclosure: I’ve taken my budgeting skills to task this year, and have really scaled back on discretionary spending. (I’ll give all credit to our franchise Wellth Check, which I also edit.) And one of the weekly thrills I was willing to cut from my spending was a manicure at a salon.

In its place, I’ve become really talented at at-home manis. With a few buffs of the nail file and swipes of varnish, my tips look like they're courtesy of a professional. 

The longevity of your polish is not just about the formula, it’s about how you apply it. Celebrity manicurist Deborah Lippmann once taught me exactly how the pros do it. Place the brush an eighth-inch away from the cuticle as your starting position.

Be careful to not get it on the cuticle itself, as polish chips faster there. Once you see the polish deposit on the nail, pull the brush right down the center. As you’re doing this, gently apply more pressure as you go so the bristles fan out and reach the sides. 

"When your nails are soaked in water, they expand," manicurist and founder of Varnish Lane, Lauren Dunne once told us. The soak can distort and widen the nails' shape, and when you paint polish over the nail and it dries "[this causes] your polish to chip prematurely." 

You should not only skip the soak prior but for several hours after as the varnish fully dries, which can actually take several hours. Again, soaking nails in water causes the nails to expand and contract, which can lift the pigment before it has the chance to set. In practice, this means, skipping a bath or doing dishes. 

However, this doesn’t mean you should skip hydration. So while I no longer soak my nails before my mani, I always apply a hand cream. Hydration and antioxidants are nonnegotiable for skin and nail health—plus an ideal hand cream will also contain ingredients that can address specific skin concerns like wrinkles, dark spots, and crepiness.