Basic:Different Nailpolish Finishes (EN)

Hello everyone ♥

Today’s post contains basic information about the basic different nail polish finishes & how to recognize them. I hope this would be useful for those of you who aren’t really familiar with them and make your choice easier:

So here are the basic nail polish finishes:

1.Sheer 

The sheer nail polishes are usually designed for French manicure and thats why they are mostly flesh toned. They have poor pigmentation and usually give just a little hint of color.

2.Jelly

Again – poor pigmentation, but you can layer it to achieve medium to full pigmentation. Their finish is super glossy and the consistency is really watery.

3.Crelly

Crelly is a combination between jelly and cream finish – it has more opacity than the jelly but not as much as the cream. The crelly’s have pretty glossy finish alone.

4.Neon

Neon’s consistency is really watery. Usually the neons are jelly or crelly and often dries almost matte. If you want them to pop more just apply them over a white base color. Not all colors have neon versions.

5.Cream:

The cream finish is the most popular one. It’s actually clear colour with no glitters, shimmer etc. added. The finish is glossy and smooth. Most of the cream polishes have pretty good opacity and are one coaters.

6.Matte

The matte finish is the finish of the matte nail polishes – the nail polish dries with no shine at all when applied. The matte polishes dry pretty fast and if you don’t add a matte top coat they’ll chip really easy.

7.Suede

Just like mattes, suedes are completely matte. Suedes contain shimmer though, so that's what sets them apart from regular mattes.

8.Satin

Satin finishes end up matte as well, but not entirely matte. There is still a slight shine, but not enough to classify it as glossy.

9.Shimmer

A polish that has little bits of different coloured shimmer to the base or very similar to the base colour. These can vary quite a lot. The shimmer finish is a colored base with shimmer added to it, most of the times that color is silver or purple but there are  contrasting colors more often.

10.Irridescent

A shimmer in the polish that is different to the base colour of the polish. This finish is often confused with duochrome or shimmer. An iridiscent finish is a color that flashes a different color – for example pink polish with green shimmer.

11.Frosted

A very smooth and fine shimmer, looks frostier than regular shimmer but not as shimmery as the pearl.

12.Pearl

Very close to the frosted finish, but has a somewhat satiny look to it. Nowadays the pearly finish seems really old fashioned.

13.Foil

These polishes look quite metallic, like very fine pieces of metal chopped up but have very fine finish. When applied they look just like a foil on the nails.They exaggerate every bump or scratch on the nails.

14.Metallic

Metallic finishes make your nails appear like a liquid metal. Metallic polishes are especially popular in copper, gold, rosegold or silver.

15.Duochrome

A nail polish that often flashes different colours. These can vary from very strong flashes to faint. Duochrome polishes change color on the reflection of light. True duochromes are very obvious and often show 3colors, but sometimes even more.

16.Holographic

A jelly or crelly base with added rainbow tiny coloured glitters in. Usually they look best in the sun – they create like a rainbow effect.

17.Holographic Glitter 

A polish that has scattered pieces of glitter rather than a smooth finish that's filled with holographic pieces.

18.Glitter

A polish that has chunks of glitter, usually they are in jelly base. Glitter is one of most flashiest finishes. These glitters are often put in a jelly base. The amount of glitter can vary a lot. Sometimes you'll need top coat to smoothen the surface.

19.Scale

Scale effect is sheer or jelly base with added scale chunks in it (which are different sized and flash in different colors – usually from blueto green; green to orange and light to dark blue). The scale effect appear best with added matte top coat.

20.Matte sand

The sand polishes was ranged about 3 years ago as innovative in the manicure. Here I talked about them (link). The matte sand has no shimmers or glitters added.

21.Glitter sand

Glitter sand is a sand polish with fine glitter chunks added.

22.Thermo

The colour of the thermo polishes vary from the moment temperature of the hands and their effect appears best on longer nails. The good quality nail polishes show 4-5 shades when gets warmer/colder.

*Most of the photos are taken from Internet

So, on my opinion these are the basic nail polish finishes. I hope you enjoyed this post so far ☺.

Which finish is your favourite?

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Have a nice evening everyone ♥