A friend who is a nail tech but not yet a geek has asked me to find out...

Is it possible to omit top gel coat and just finish with coloured one?

That's it! Nice easy one hopefully! Thanks

Hey Zoe

Whether your friend chooses to finish her gel application with an additional coat of clear, sealer or s-gel is entirely optional, although she will need to apply top coat varnish after removing the inhibition layer with sanitiser, so as to restore the high shine.

HTHs xx

PS: Encourage her to become a member of Salongeek too!

What was her reason for not wanting to put the top coat of gel on Zo Zo? I find that it does help to protect the colour.

I don't know why she asked the question. She phoned me yesterday asking how I'm getting on with Calgel and I think she may have been considering switching from Bio. I'm not sure there's much difference.

She says her overlays only stay on for 2 weeks tops, generally, she has one client who they last longer on but the client has a cook, a cleaner and a nanny sort of thing, so is not hard on her nails.

Anyway, she went to another salon (I think) to have her own nails infilled today and then asked the question so I don't actually know why. It may have been the way the other tech did her nails or it may have been something that came up in conversation between them. Tbh I don't think she would have pretended not to be a nail tech ijkyim. She's a lovely girl and I think she would have been upfront with them.

Thanks Karen, I will pass that on. I might email her a link to the site but she works full time and has a husband and two little kids to look after, if she comes on here... well... it's the twilight zone isn't it, lol

HI

Many moons ago before the launched sealer we didnt use anything on top of colour so yes you can but i always found that when you wiped with sanitiser at the end it took the shine off the gel and when you look at the pad you can see it removes some colour too. So although you can personally i wouldnt.

If you did though you would have to keep a good layer of top coat on.

HTH

Just to echo what Little Angel said....

I was trained to always put clear over colour.
Reason being some colours (especially dark opaque ones) don't always cure as well as clear - then when you swipe, a bit of colour might come away.
If you cure your colour, cure final layer of clear, THEN swipe there is no risk of losing any colour.

A final layer of clear prevents having to fix it up at the end.