How to give your nails a break from gel
Trying to break the gel cycle? Give your nails a glow-up with the new treatment and colour hybrid polishes.
Gel nails and I are on a break.
It had been a long time coming. Ever since I had a set of impulse-acrylics removed last autumn, things hadn’t been the same: constant snagging and peeling. My nails became paper-thin. When I wasn’t wearing some kind of polish, they were forever catching on everything (constant pulled jumpers and snagged tights).
None of this is helped by the fact that midlife nails are naturally more prone to becoming brittle and cracked, due to hormonal changes (falling estrogen levels affect the body’s ability to retain moisture, and estrogen also assists collagen production).
Usually, I stick to gel pedis and keep to regular polish on my hands, but those acrylics—followed by some holiday experimenting with at-home UV gel kits, which I wrote about here—took their toll. I’m even giving my toes a break from the gel, too.
Among the MBE community, I’ve had several requests for suggestions for at-home, post-gel nail treatment products. Meanwhile, the trend for transparent, hint-of-a-tint polishes has ushered in a new generation of formulas that are perfect for giving nails a glow-up.
I’m not swearing off gel forever (I might be under the lamp next week, and a spring nail colour edit is coming!). I also want to try the Bio Sculpture gel nail system (as recently wrote about at her Substack, here).
But I do like the idea of going longer between sessions, and so also reducing the frequency of exposure to UV lamps. Some advise slathering on sunscreen before pro or at-home UV gel sessions, and I now keep a tube of SPF in my bag of polishes for this reason, easily to hand. Others even wear fingerless gloves (or do both).
My nails are already looking and feeling much better for the breather. Here are 5 products I’ve had on rotation.