The Best Way To Get Gel Nail Polish Off

How do you get it off?

If you've ever applied standard polish to your nails only to notice the colour chipping away surprisingly quickly, gel nail polish will have significant appeal. This polish can, compared to regular old polish, resist chipping for a minimum of five times longer.

However, there remains a major downside: removing it can be very tricky. Soaking a cotton bud in remover before swiping the bud across your fingertips won't bring quick results. Still, there remain various options for removing that polish.

Is this an ace method of using acetone?

Acetone is a standard ingredient of polish-removing solutions, as at least 90% of it is necessary for dissolving the polish's polymers. One technique highlighted by Hello! involves pouring acetone into a small glass bowl before placing this bowl inside a larger one containing hot - but not boiling - water.

As the acetone warms, buff off the polish's top layer with a nail file, which you should use to break the polish's "seal" at the nail's edge. Then, each hand should be soaked in the acetone for roughly 15 minutes. In that time, the polish should begin lifting - enabling you to remove the polish by gently scraping it with a cuticle stick. You can soak the nails for even longer if necessary.

You would proceed to rinse your hands with water, but the acetone may have a discernibly harsh effect on your skin - for example, by making it look unusually dry and wrinkly. Furthermore, much diligent scraping and soaking is required for this removal technique to work.

Would you be foiled if you used foil?

You would utilise the previously-described bowl method in buffing your nails for this alternative means of removing gel nail polish. Before doing that, though, you would need to cut out 10 squares of kitchen foil; those squares will be needed later.

You will have to start using one of them after soaking a cotton wool ball in acetone before placing that ball on top of the nail. The ball would be secured in place by foil wrapped around the nail. This process should be repeated for each nail before a 15-minute wait for the acetone to take effect.

After the wait, scrape the polish off with a cuticle remover. If the polish still isn't coming off at this stage, reapply the foil and wait again before re-attempting. Admittedly, you might struggle to continue securing the foils while using sufficient remover to take off the last of the polish. So, is there a less arduous method? Fortunately, the answer is yes...

Many ways of lifting nail polish can ultimately disappoint in their effectiveness; for instance, TODAY found no results from sticking a finger inside a jar containing an acetone-soaked sponge. However, we offer Stylfile Gel Nail Polish Remover Clips which can securely hold remover-soaked cotton wool on each nail. These clips speed up removing as, compared to foils, they better hold the wool to the nail. These gel polish remover clips are available in packs of 10 through our website. Have a look!