We have all heard the expression, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, but there are times when creating nail enhancements, that we need to be a bit more disciplined and apply ‘rules of design’ in order to please our clients and sometimes, to please the judges of a competition!!



It is even more important to understand that the ‘rules’ need to alter a little bit when the technician is using the French application of whatever product he or she uses. When the tips of the nails are whiter-than-white, it tends to distort the balance of the overall look and very easily makes an enhancement look top-heavy and ungainly.

I judge many technicians’ work; in competitions and even more often the photographs they submit to me for a critique. Most of the time the technical work or the application of the product is excellent. The thing that most often lets a technician’s work down in my eyes, is that the length they have chosen is just too long and the symmetry and balance of the finished work is not as attractive as it could be and would have been if only the free edge had been made shorter.

In competition work, some technicians produce an ‘extreme’ smile line in order to ‘strut their stuff’ and show the judges the consistent control they have when using their white product to create ‘smile lines’. Although this extreme look can be used successfully on a model whose nail beds are extremely long – it is a look that can actually foreshorten the look of a normal, or shorter-than-average nail bed length, and make the nails look less attractive. The same thing of course also applies to clients in the salon where it is more attractive to stick to a natural smile line shape (which accounts for 99% of cases) unless the client has ultra long nail beds.

Barring the odd instance where a client is one of those ‘extreme’ clients and likes to break all the rules; for the prettiest look and the most practical ‘real life’ length:

The free edge of the enhancement should never be longer than half the length of the nail bed.

The length can of course be anything shorter than this length that compliments the hand of the client or model.

When using the ‘French Look’ with a brilliant white free edge, the rule should be altered to:

The free edge of the enhancement should be just a bit shorter than half the length of the nail bed.

Making the enhancements just that tiny bit, or more, shorter, creates the perfect combination of balance and beauty for which we all strive.