Nailing It With Taking Care of Your Nails at Home!

You might think that for your nails to look their best, you need to go reg­u­lar­ly to a nail salon, right? But did you know that you can do an excel­lent job your­self at home? Your nails can get dam­aged if they are not man­i­cured prop­er­ly, and they cer­tain­ly suf­fer from wear and tear from dai­ly liv­ing and bad habits too.

Different Symptoms Could Mean Certain Problems

If you prac­tice good hygiene and dai­ly atten­tion to your nails, they can look clean, beau­ti­ful and healthy each day. The state of your nails can give you a clue as to your inter­nal health? If they are healthy, they have a good uni­form shape, they are smooth and even look­ing, with­out grooves or pits. Unhealthy nails will have hor­i­zon­tal grooves, which could be a sign of stress or high fever. White spots might be from bit­ing your nails or apply­ing pol­ish on them too often. Peel­ing nails might mean a vit­a­min defi­cien­cy. Red, swollen skin could be as a result of you bit­ing or remov­ing your cuticles. If your nails change shape, it could be a sign of an iron defi­cien­cy. All of these might require you to vis­it a der­ma­tol­o­gist if you are wor­ried. But ok, let’s get down to effec­tive ways of keep­ing healthy, beau­ti­ful nails:

• Wash Hands Often, And Feet Too: This pre­vents bac­te­ria and dirt from col­lect­ing under the fingernails.

• Brush Up Your Nails: This fur­ther gets rid of bac­te­ria. A good rec­om­men­da­tion is to brush or scrub them with a tooth­brush – this exfo­li­ates and removes dead skin. Don’t use scrubs that can con­tain harsh chem­i­cals. The del­i­cate skin can get dam­aged and exposed to infection.

• Use a Mois­tur­iz­er: Reg­u­lar wash­ing will cause dry­ness, so use a mois­tur­iz­er every time you wash your hands, work­ing the mois­tur­ize deep into your nails and cuticles.

• Keep Your Nails Trimmed: They need reg­u­lar trims to keep them in opti­mal con­di­tion. Use reli­able, good clip­pers or man­i­cure scis­sors to trim them. Trim straight across and then round the tips to give a gen­tle curve.

• Don’t Inter­fere With Your Cuti­cles: The cuti­cles are essen­tial because they keep the nails pro­tect­ed from harm­ful bac­te­r­i­al and infections.

• Nev­er Bite Your Nails: This can make the tips look uneven and worse, they come into con­tact with the sali­va in your mouth. That can cause infec­tion. Bit­ing nails also leaves them brit­tle and weak. Bet you didn’t know that there is a name for the com­pul­sive oral habit of bit­ing nails – it’s called Ony­chopha­gia! An excel­lent tip to help is to apply a coat of clear gel on the nails – this often makes them thick and hard and more dif­fi­cult to bite.

• Don’t For­get To File Your Nails: File them gen­tly and slow­ly in one direc­tion. That smooths away rough edges and doesn’t dam­age the nail beds. Saw­ing them back­ward and for­ward weak­ens them, and they might break off prematurely.

• Try & Go Nat­ur­al: This is because some elab­o­rate nail art­works with bright, bold colours look pret­ty good, but they dry out and weak­en the nail struc­ture. Allow your nails to rest and repair, so they stay stronger and health­i­er. Avoid harsh nail pol­ish too, because it often has tox­ic chem­i­cals called formalde­hyde, toluene, and dibutyl phtha­late – these make your nails split and be brit­tle. Read labels too, because the water-based pol­ish­es, even though they don’t last as long as the oth­er types are a safer option for del­i­cate nails.

• Health Is More Impor­tant Than Length: For sure, we love those long, paint­ed nails, and they can look sexy and stun­ning. But first, its health. It’s rec­om­mend­ed you keep nails short, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you do suf­fer from break­ages. Short nails, man­i­cured ones, can look pret­ty professional!

• Stay Away From Man­i­cures In Gels & Acrylics: Lots of women think it’s the ulti­mate solu­tion for nails because they last longer and are con­ve­nient. But these can cause dam­age to your nailbed, dry­ing out and dam­ag­ing the nat­ur­al skin around the nails.

• Use a Good Nail Pol­ish Remover: Oth­er­wise, they can be harsh on your hands – choose ones that are ace­tone-free. h

• ilWhen Doing Dirty Work, Use Gloves: Watery work like wash­ing dish­es and clean­ing the home with harsh chem­i­cals can wreak hav­oc on your nails. Prefer­ably use gloves when clean­ing your home. Also, when you go out­side on a cold win­tery day, wear mit­tens to pre­vent dry, flaky skin. There are fab nail strength­en­ing treat­ments, look up nat­ur­al ther­a­pies to strength­en nails.

• Nat­u­ral­ly, Eat­ing a Healthy Diet: The secret to main­tain­ing beau­ti­ful, strong nails is to eat foods rich in pro­tein and zinc to get rid of white spots. Cal­ci­um strength­ens, and vit­a­mins A and C pre­vent them from look­ing dull.

• Drink Water: Nails that con­stant­ly peel and break might be a result of dehy­dra­tion. Drink at least 8 to 10 glass­es of water a day – this helps pro­mote healthy nail growth.

Getting the Perfect Nail Manicure at Home!

There can be real sat­is­fac­tion with paint­ing your nails at home, and it can even have ther­a­peu­tic benefits. Some­times, though, doing your nails can be hard to achieve salon results. But for­tu­nate­ly, here are some celebri­ty secrets that have been spilled out that might just have your friends ask­ing you for your nail salon’s address!

• Clean Nails With Polish Remover

Spend time prep­ping as much as pol­ish­ing. Take off old nail pol­ish with a good nail remover like Sal­ly Hansen because it’s got essen­tial nutri­ents in it to help to mois­tur­ize your cuti­cles and strength­en your nails. Even run­ning this over your nails if they don’t have pol­ish on will get rid of exces­sive dirt and oils, which could spoil your pol­ish. Then after that’s done, wash your hands with soap and water.

• Clip, File, & Buff!

Next is clip­ping, fil­ing, and buff­ing. A well-known celebri­ty man­i­curist, Deb­o­rah Lipp­mann, says you should hold your file flush to your nail – then tilt it, so you file from slight­ly under­neath. That will allow you to see pre­cise­ly what you’re doing and also pro­tects from over-fil­ing. Final­ly, buff both sides as well as the tops of nails using a nail buffer – not an emery board. That cre­ates a smooth sur­face. Buff­ing is use­ful to pre­vent nat­ur­al oils from build­ing up, leav­ing residue on them, which can ruin your man­i­cure. Buff­ing nails also bright­ens them.

• Cuticles Need To Be Pushed Back

Get your cuti­cles pepped with a cuti­cle remover. Ensure that it’s not a balm or an oil – remem­ber, cuti­cle oils and cuti­cle removers are two dif­fer­ent things and can’t be used inter­change­ably. Oils help with mois­tur­iz­ing whiles removers act like exfo­li­at­ing treat­ments for the nail beds. Gen­tly push back, using a cuti­cle stick, remem­ber­ing that it is the cuti­cles that pro­tect the nails from bac­te­ria and keeps them soft, so don’t cut them.

• Now Exfoliate Your Hands

Next up is exfo­li­at­ing your hands, wrists and also your fore­arms. Use a scrub that will elim­i­nate dead skin cells, plus it will replen­ish mois­ture. Use an orange stick to clean away grime from under the nails gen­tly, wash­ing hands after­ward and dry­ing them thoroughly.

• Time To Moisturize Your Hands & Cuticles

Mois­tur­ize your hands next to avoid smudg­ing the almost-dry nail pol­ish lat­er. Use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to mas­sage your hands, relax­ing them. Fin­ish by swip­ing each nail with nail pol­ish remover to remove any residue.

• Apply a Base Coat Next

Apply­ing a base coat hydrates the nails and pro­tects them from chip­ping. One nail guru sug­gests that you wait 2 full min­utes in-between coats, start­ing with the base coats. 

• Apply The First Coat Of Colour

That is the nicest part; apply­ing the colour of your choice. Be sure to get the brush all the way down to the cuti­cle as well as the cor­ners of your nail. When you apply max­i­mum cov­er­ing for the first coat, it makes the sec­ond coat easy. Keep the lay­er thin, though. A lot of us put too much pol­ish on the brush and add too many strokes. It’s vital to put just enough pol­ish on the brush to cov­er the nail in one coat. It is rec­om­mend­ed you paint three times, down the mid­dle and one on each side.

• Apply The Second Coat Of Colour

After the full two min­utes, apply the sec­ond coat of nail pol­ish. If you’re using sheer or pas­tel shades, you might need a third coat for a full colour, but still keep­ing it nice­ly thin.

• Finish With a Topcoat

A top­coat needs to be added to pro­tect the beau­ti­ful man­i­cure from chip­ping — it also adds a nice shine to the nails. Don’t skip out on it, or it will short­en the lifes­pan of all your hard work. Care­ful­ly apply the top coat on, because if you do a messy job, you ruin the entire man­i­cure. Make sure you allow every­thing to dry prop­er­ly. Top­Coats are what give the nails that healthy gleam you see at the nail salon. Then you can even fol­low up with a sep­a­rate shine enhancer.

• Finally, Clean Up Rough Edges & Let Your Nails Dry

Clear up mis­takes or wob­bly edges by tak­ing a piece of cot­ton ball and soak­ing it in nail pol­ish remover over the end of your cuti­cle stick, care­ful­ly trac­ing around your nails. If you have some nail pol­ish remover pads, you can try and fold one into a tri­an­gle to make your appli­ca­tion more pre­cise. Then let your nails dry for a fur­ther five min­utes. Voila! – look how beau­ti­ful that DIY job is!