Gel Nails – Which Brand is Best?

(gif sourced from: Fat Junkie Nail Art)

Doing my nails is a serious hassle, I like to have them looking nice, but I do not have the time or patience to sit, manicure, paint and watch them dry. The results are usually less than pleasing. I may have a perfectly painted left hand, but, I am certainly not ambidextrous, (hats off to those who have nailed this skill), so the outcome of my right hand is always pretty substandard.

But none of this really matters, because after about two minutes, I totally forget I’ve painted them and start dancing around the kitchen or doing the laundry…. The result is a smudgy catastrophe, which needs to be removed immediately.

This is why for as long as I can remember I have paid to have my nails done. I’ve had pretty much every kind of nail extension or polish on the market. When I was younger I had Calgel extensions, but found I could peel these off quite easily. So I switched from this to acrylics, which are typically harder and more robust, but I found that no matter how long, short, round, square or oval I had them they always looked fake. I had a break for a while (a long while), and chose to grow my own nails. This took longer than expected because years of fake nails had left them weak, so they tended to snap and so I’d bite the rest off.

To help with the growing and strengthening process I used O.P.I Nail Envy. The original. I would really recommend this to anyone reading this who has weak nails, or has suffered damaged from prolonged nail enhancements.

Nowadays there are many gel nail varnishes on the market. Shellac, O.P.I and Gelish are the ones I have tried. These are, generally speaking, the top three gel polish brands on the market. However, I believe Gelish is not as widely available in the UK, as the other two. They all offer pretty much the same thing, give or take: Durable long-lasting nail colour, that doesn’t chip.

So which brand is best? I will be reviewing them over the next few weeks. Starting with Gelish. Stay tuned!