Random nail polish opinions

[yuuago]

- If someone tells you that a polish doesn't need a basecoat, they're BSing you. I don't know about you, but if I want something to keep looking nice (or at least acceptable) until the end of the week, basecoat/topcoat is a must.

- Sally Hansen sucks. All their polish, and even the basecoat/topcat, stains my nails a horrible shade of orange. Could just be my body chemistry interacting with it weirdly, but man, I'm never buying this stuff again. (That's what I told myself last time...)

- OPI Infinite Shine basecoat+topcoat is pretty nice, but if you try to use it with their regular formula polish, it interacts weirdly and chips like hell. I'm going to use up the one Infinite Shine formula polish that I have (+ the basecoat/topcoat), but I own too many in the regular formula to even consider making the switch.

- "Natural" polishes ain't worth the trouble if you want it to look nice for more than a day. They chip if you so much as look at them funny.

- Shellac has its place, but I personally can't stand it. Anything that takes that much effort to remove is something I don't have time for.

- If I had to pick one shade out of all of the ones I own, top of the lot, "If you could only wear this one polish and no others" - OPI Kyoto Pearl is it. Both classy and classic but never boring; goes with everything; looks great all week. Yeah.

Comments

[scissorsevered]

I didn't read this properly first and I thought you were talking about Polish people and that they need to wear coats during the winter and that anyone who says otherwise is lying.

[yuuago]

Okay, that's hilarious. Well, I must say that coats ARE recommended for everyone, yes!

[octahedrite]

Pearl is just great. My personal favorite is Revlon's Pure Pearl :) (not familiar with the brand you listed)

[yuuago]

Dress it up, dress it down, goes with everything! Sure do love a multipurpose shade.

[straightforwardly]

Your first point is such a hard yes, same for me. I can't remember the last time I put on nail polish without a top and base coat. Maybe when I was a teenage? In any case, it's an absolute essential!

My go-to brand is Essie, though I unfortunately actually can't wear nail polish very frequently anymore due to work. :/ Weekends just feel too short for all the work/time put into it to be justified. But whenever I have vacation or a decent number of days off in a row, my first thought is still always, "ooo, I have a chance to do my nails!", haha.

I also have some Zoya polishes I picked up during sales quite a few years ago that are also pretty great, imo. I started off with Sally Hansen when I was a teenager, but while I didn't have your orange nails problem, the bottles always dried out so fast or otherwise developed a weird texture/consistency.

[yuuago]

Bummer that you can't wear polish much these days! Essie's great, I have a few of their shades and I really like them. (Also love the price point, ha)

Never tried Zoya myself, but I've heard it's really nice!

[ireneultramarine]

...People paint their nails without putting on base coat? Won't it stain horribly? (Then again, I learned that from experience when I painted my bare nails dark teal in middle school.)

Sally Hansen is not good, though staining was not among the issues I had with them. Could be a YMMV thing, could be that American Sally Hansen is formulated differently. With the weak color payoff and the weird consistency, it would honestly make the experience so much more enjoyable just to invest in one or two more dollars per bottle for OPI or Essie.

On that note — I have a few bottles of OPI's normal line, but have not tried the Infinite Shine series. How different does it perform compared to the normal line? Is it any good?

[yuuago]

Infinite Shine - I find that it's hard-wearing and that I get about a week's worth of wear out of it. It's very sturdy. However, I only own one Infinite Shine shade, a medium semi-pearlised neutral, so I can't say how it performs more broadly.

Typically I get 5 days of wear out of regular OPI, though; it gets chippy just in time for the weekend, which is when I'd switch the colour out anyway. So, we're talking 5 vs 7 days.