Nail design ideas

Picking one

That is a lot to scroll, and the pages do different jobs. Knowing which question you are asking makes the scroll a lot shorter.

The shape comes first

Two of the categories are about shape. Almond tapers towards the tip and reads long even when the nail is not, and short is the length most people actually wear and the one most inspiration pages leave out. Shape changes how a colour sits on the hand, so it is the thing to settle before the colour.

Then the colour

A nude is chosen against your own hand. The same bottle is right on one person and goes grey on the next, which is why that page shows twenty-four. Red behaves the same way: the twenty-four there run from a true glossy red through burgundy and brick, and they are not interchangeable. The morena page puts the colours that suit brown skin side by side: terracotta, wine, olive, gold and the deeper nudes.

Toes are their own page

Toenails are kept short, so a pedicure design lives in the colour and on the big toes. Pedicure designs has twenty-four, from one classic red to a small daisy on each big toe, and the gel pedicure guide explains why gel lasts longer there.

A finish is something she does

Cat eye, ombre and chrome are techniques rather than colours. A magnet held over wet gel pulls the shimmer into a band. An ombre is blended while the gel is still soft, which is why it cannot be added to a set that has already cured. Chrome is a powder burnished into a cured top coat until it mirrors. Asking for one of these is asking for a method, so it helps to name it when you book. Aura is a blend too, a soft glow in the centre of the nail, and 3D nails add something raised, a gel flower, a pearl or a chrome droplet.

Some are about when

Summer here runs about nine months, so summer nails cover most of the year. Christmas has the opposite problem. It starts in September, and a set booked in November is competing with everybody else who left it late. The ber months bring their own colours before that: autumn nails in rust, olive and plum, then the gold, glitter and polka dots of New Year nails for Media Noche.

And one that is really several

The French tip is the set we are asked for most, and it covers several looks. The line can be a hairline or a centimetre, white or wine or chrome, straight across or cut on a diagonal. It is worth pointing at the exact one you mean.

Sending one to us

Under every picture there is a link that starts an enquiry with that style already written into it. That saves describing a set in words, which is the part that goes wrong: nude and short mean different things to different people, and a photograph does not. Send two if you cannot decide. Your technician reads them before she packs, so what arrives at your table is what was on your screen.