Favourite gel & polish brands

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Joined
May 16, 2019
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Location
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Hi everyone.

I have a few questions - I would like to know what professional nail polish brand is your favourite. Do you stock more than one brand, or choose to stick with one company for your colours?
What about gel polish? I see that The Gel Bottle and Gelish are very popular. I am just wondering where to start, really, as there are so many different ones on the market.

Another thing - I have seen it being said many times that only professional nail-tech brands should be bought for use in our businesses and on clients. Why is it then that certain brands are widely deemed as acceptable, but not others? Such as OPI, ORLY, Essie? These polishes can be bought by the wide public and online, not just by nail techs, yet it seems that they are widely viewed as being fine, as opposed to other brands on the high street/online.
I am genuinely curious about this, and would like to hear your thoughts :)
 
Hi everyone.

I have a few questions - I would like to know what professional nail polish brand is your favourite. Do you stock more than one brand, or choose to stick with one company for your colours?
What about gel polish? I see that The Gel Bottle and Gelish are very popular. I am just wondering where to start, really, as there are so many different ones on the market.

Another thing - I have seen it being said many times that only professional nail-tech brands should be bought for use in our businesses and on clients. Why is it then that certain brands are widely deemed as acceptable, but not others? Such as OPI, ORLY, Essie? These polishes can be bought by the wide public and online, not just by nail techs, yet it seems that they are widely viewed as being fine, as opposed to other brands on the high street/online.
I am genuinely curious about this, and would like to hear your thoughts :)
I think the idea is to be able to offer your clients a bespoke service not available for them at home. Regular polish is a struggle but gel polish and other skilled services acrylic etc are what set us apart. Non qualified shouldn't be able to get hold of genuine cnd products for example with the exception of solar oil etc that we can retail to them x
 
For gel polish we use Halo by Pure Nails! This brand is amazing and by far the best gel we have used and our clients also agree that it lasts the longest s and isn’t hard to remove. We have a few brands in stock as originally Halo didn’t have a huge range of colours so we started trying new ones but we have since gone back to halo as they have a much bigger selection and quite cheap in comparasion.
Our new clients will often question the brand as it isn’t something they have seen before in other salons. We always get people requesting the “more popular brands” as they say they are the only ones that will last on there nails but I can honestly say we haven’t had one bad complaint about Halo.

The Manicure Company is also good but I find the consistency is very thick so if I’m not careful I get the rippling/bubbling on some nails
 
Cnd vinylux for regular

Ink London for gel. British brand. Very good support. Very reasonable stock prices compare to cnd, hellish and TGB
 
Thank you for these suggestions. I will spend some time researching them online now. If anyone prefers any others, please do add them here - gel polish and especially regular polish.
 
Cuccio, Morgan Taylor,China Glaze, opi,and Orly are in my regular polish collection at the moment....I have loads of them! I pick out the colour that I know I will use and have a selection of base/tops that compliment too. ( many years have passed since I first began...so I have quite a few, ha ha )

Gel is cuccio, so I can match up with toes if clients don't want gel on toes Customer service is fab and I have always liked their collections! I also have some Gellux (nudes) That I trained in, and a couple of INK that I chose because of the colour. Always check lamp for wavelength cure and the appropriate cure times too. I have 3 lamps!
I only use American or EU brands, no "Chineseum" stuff.
 
It used to be simple. A professional product was one that you could not get without some form of licensure or certification, made by a company that marketed only to professionals. Nowadays, when anyone can get any product online, the definition of a professional product seems elusive. And many companies that make professional products now also have consumer divisions (like CND, OPI, Orly), so it is more useful to think of a professional product rather than a professional company, although those certainly do exist. But I think you can still easily identify a professional product. A professional product is one that is designed with professional usage in mind and marketed to professionals through trade journals, professional shows and organizations, and that provides the appropriate professional supports - education, training, r&d, customer service, MSDS, associated products, etc.. Such products tend to be a bit harder to find and may still require certification, of a higher quality (remembering that quality often goes beyond what is in the bottle), and often higher in price.
 
I would recommend the Ikon.IQ Nails Prima range for gels. It's uniquely formulated and doesn't contain any of the top three allergens. Not just safer for my clients (some of which are now wearing gels again after giving up due to previously having allergic reactions to everything else) but it's safer for me as I'm in contact with gel products on a daily basis.
They are a strictly ethical pro only brand from Sweden that formulate their own products rather than buy in from a manufacturer. The gels are excellent and they take great care of their customers.
They don't make nail polish but I've had no trouble matching colours up using various polish brands I keep.
 
@NancySyd - Thankyou for making those points. It put things into perspective.
I will continue my research and browse the selections of colours to see which ones I like the best. I will then be well-informed as to what's available, and do some shopping :) Thank you all for your recommendations.
 

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