Here's the ultimate tip for removing semi-permanent varnish without leaving your nails on

Semi-permanent varnish has changed the situation and offered many women who love impeccable manicures a real time saver. Only problem? Nails become more damaged. “More than the technique itself, it is above all the removal which often proves problematic. In many salons, the staff wants to go quickly and sand, thus removing the upper and protective layer of the nail,” regrets Laurence Pignata, manicurist for seventeen years at the David Mallett salon in Paris.

Choose the right product

The one who created two nail polishes in collaboration with the Kure Bazaar brand therefore recommends, if you are a regular user of semi-permanent, to invest in a product to apply it yourself at home. “We pour it into a coffee cup, not a bowl so as not to waste nail polish remover for nothing, and let our fingers soak in it. For the duration, it all depends on the product used. The expert has a preference for the CND Shellac brand reference: “It only takes five minutes and normally there is nothing else to do”.

For other brands (the application time can vary between 10 and 30 minutes), the expert recommends lightly sanding the top of the nail. “You just have to file the top coat, you don’t have to go all the way to the nail. We should therefore not see the white, just the varnish.” And if that's not enough, she adds that you can remove the rest with cotton or lightly scrape “with an olive wood stick.” The manicurist also specifies that you can make foil wrappers around cotton soaked in nail polish remover for the most resistant varnishes.

Finally, for those who tend to peel off the varnish when it begins to separate from the nail, the expert insists: “It is better to avoid. You can gently pull on it if you see that it comes off easily. But the problem is that, most of the time, there is still a place where it is well attached. And so when we're going to pull it, we're going to tear off part of the nail film, the one which is above and therefore which protects the most. Moral: we resist temptation and instead rely on a nail polish remover bath for the well-being of our nails.