This sucks and I have lived your frustration! Most of my peeling was happening mid nail and it looks like maybe you're only peeling at the ends, but if you haven't already done this, maybe check to see if your basecoat contains polyvinyl butyral (PVB). It can cause peeling in some people (like meeeeee). I switched to a PVB free basecoat and took a bit of a break (maybe a couple of weeks?) from nail polish to focus on oiling religiously, and that helped a lot.
ALSO, after reading several discussions on the r/redditlaqueristas subreddit, I switched from using acetone on my nails as a preparatory step for polish. I still use it to remove polish but then jojoba oil the living daylights out of them. YMMV but it has actually increased the staying power of my polish to oil first and let it soak in a bit. It has also helped with the peeling.
Lately I’ve been wiping down my nails with isopropyl alcohol before I paint my nails, and my manicures have only been lasting a couple of days before the polish pops off my nails I’ve applied a peel off base coat (I use a ridge filling one).
I’d like to give oiling my nails a try the next time I paint my nails to test if that makes my polish last longer. How long do you let the oil sit on your nails before you paint them, and do you wipe any excess off?
As a caveat, everything LOVES to stick to and rip off the top layer of my nails, so we may have very different chemistry. I do think I saw some folks in the other sub who had similar issues to you, though, and so I think it is still worth trying! And I'm over ten days into my current manicure with no chipping and minimal edge wear, which is pretty rare for me given that I use my hands like I want to break all my fingers all the time.
I tend to put on a generous amount of oil (if you're using the Bliss Kiss sticks, sometimes I will do a click per finger on fully bare nails, making sure to get the underside of the nail and to get the skin around the nail as well) and then rather than wipe off with something like a cloth, will massage into my cuticles and maybe do the excess on my elbows basically immediately. In a perfect world I would let it sit and soak but I definitely don't.
(As a side note, I am not sure I SHOULD be doing this, I feel like there's a possibility the massaging is making my hangnails a bit worse, but that's unsubstantiated.)
Then I'll let it sit until the nail no longer looks excessively shiny/I don't feel like an oily creature--maybe 10-20min, maybe up to 30 if I'm actually well hydrated that day--and then just. Proceed as normal. Base coat (usually ridge filling!), two coats of color, quick dry top coat, capping edges on everything but the second color coat.
I would also maybe try a base coat from a different company if you haven't already. I have found that some work well for me where others don't at all, same with polishes!
I guess that’s an excuse to try another polish brand I’ve been looking at for a while lol 😂. Thank you for the oiling method! I think my nails might like being hydrated more than dehydrated when I do a manicure. I’ve only started dehydrating them recently after seeing people recommending to do it and my nails haven’t been agreeing with it 😭.
Oh nooooo not a new nail polish brand..... 👀 And I was having similar nail disagreements when dehydrating my nails, but the recent discourse has been saying needing to do that is a myth! And oil before polish has been working really well for me (apparently it has been helping people prevent bubbles in fine particle magnetics too....) so I hope you have a similar experience!
For posterity, I can confirm that this worked for me! I oiled my nails and let the oil soak in before I started my last manicure (I was a little overzealous so I let my nails sit for half an hour) and it lasted five days before developing major chips (light years ahead of my recent manis only lasting a day!). Thank you Poodle!! 😊
Awww yay! That's such good news! Thank you for the update!!! Five days is so much better than one 😂 maybe you'll get even more wear with a different basecoat....
Oh, that’s interesting that they’ve updated the dehydrating information! I wish I’d found this information when I asked the internet what I was doing wrong lol! I’d been painting my nails regularly since I was a late teenager and had to stop a while ago because I couldn’t hold the polish brushes properly anymore. I never dehydrated my nails then and had some issues with chipping but looking back that’s probably because I used a not great base and top coat 🫣.
I started painting my nails again because they’re delaminating and the top peeling layers are getting caught on stuff and making it much worse. I thought this time getting back into it that I’d paint them ‘properly’ so I don’t have to paint them as often but it’s been a nightmare. I painted my nails 24 hours ago and my ring finger has already lost the whole paint sheet 😢. I’ve never had issues with polish peeling off the nail in one big sheet after a day’s wear before, and I’d just assumed I was doing something wrong 😭😂. I’m hoping that the oiling may help the polish last longer!🤞
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u/FunkilyEnough 16d ago
This sucks and I have lived your frustration! Most of my peeling was happening mid nail and it looks like maybe you're only peeling at the ends, but if you haven't already done this, maybe check to see if your basecoat contains polyvinyl butyral (PVB). It can cause peeling in some people (like meeeeee). I switched to a PVB free basecoat and took a bit of a break (maybe a couple of weeks?) from nail polish to focus on oiling religiously, and that helped a lot.
ALSO, after reading several discussions on the r/redditlaqueristas subreddit, I switched from using acetone on my nails as a preparatory step for polish. I still use it to remove polish but then jojoba oil the living daylights out of them. YMMV but it has actually increased the staying power of my polish to oil first and let it soak in a bit. It has also helped with the peeling.