The method

How to apply a polish pen

Seven steps, about ten minutes, and one instruction most people ignore. Do all seven and you get five days. Do steps three and four only and you get two. The difference is the boring bits, which is annoying but also good news, because the boring bits are easy.

The seven steps Troubleshooting Nail art Making it last Removal

Essential

A pen, a tissue, ten minutes

That's genuinely it. Everything below this is optional and everything below this makes it better.

Strongly advised

Something to degrease with

A prep wipe, or surgical spirit on cotton, or in a pinch a splash of nail polish remover. Skipping this is the single biggest cause of early chipping.

Nice to have

Top coat, a cotton bud, a file

The add-ons exist because we got tired of saying "use a cotton bud" and having nobody own a cotton bud.

Step by step

The seven steps

1 About 90 seconds

Prep: dry, bare, degreased

Take off any old polish and let your nails sit for a minute — freshly stripped nails are damp with solvent even when they look dry, and lacquer laid on solvent lifts in a day.

Push your cuticles back gently with a towel after a shower, or with the flat of your thumbnail. You are not trimming anything. You are just making sure the lacquer meets the nail plate rather than a fold of skin, because skin moves and lacquer doesn't, and that edge is where a chip starts.

Shape the free edge with a file if it's ragged, moving in one direction rather than sawing back and forth.

Then degrease. Wipe every nail with a prep wipe or a little surgical spirit and don't touch them afterwards — not to check they're dry, not to move your hair. Your fingertips carry oil. That's the whole point of the step.

If you moisturise your hands first, you've undone this. Hand cream after, always.

Cuticle pushed back, free edge filed one way, whole nail wiped. Then hands off.

2 15 seconds, once per pen

Prime the tip

A brand-new pen is dry. The lacquer sits in the barrel and has to be walked up into the felt, which takes roughly fifteen twists of the base the first time you use it. People do four twists, see nothing, and conclude the pen is broken. It isn't. Keep going.

Twist with the pen pointing down onto a folded tissue, not onto your nail. When colour appears on the tissue, stop immediately — one more twist past that point and you'll have a bead of lacquer sitting on the felt, which is exactly how a cuticle gets flooded.

Blot the primed tip once on the tissue. You want the felt damp, not loaded. A correctly primed tip looks matte and dark, not wet and shiny.

On later uses, one or two twists is plenty. If the tip has gone stiff between sessions, press it against the tissue for a second to soften it before twisting.

Nine times out of ten, "my pen won't flow" is an underprimed tip and "my pen floods" is an overprimed one. Same dial, two directions.

Twist over a tissue, not over your hand. Fifteen turns on a new pen, one or two after that.

3 Two minutes for ten nails

First coat: three strokes, thin

Here is the bit the fibre tip is for. Hold the pen so the flat of the tip lies against the nail, not the point — the wide edge is what gives you a clean line. Steepen the angle and you get a thin scratchy stripe; lie it flat and you get the full width of the tip.

Then three strokes, in this order:

Centre. Place the tip just short of the cuticle — about a millimetre of bare nail showing — and draw straight down to the free edge in one pass. Do not go back over it.
Left side. Start at the same height, tuck the tip against the left side wall, and follow the curve down. The fibre tip does the tracing.
Right side. Same thing, mirrored.

The first coat will look patchy and slightly translucent. It is supposed to. If your first coat looks perfect, it's too thick, and it will bubble, dent and peel off in a sheet on day two.

Do all ten nails before you go back. By the time you've finished the tenth, the first is ready.

That millimetre of bare nail at the cuticle is not a mistake. It's the gap that makes regrowth invisible for an extra two days, and it's why a manicure done at home can look better a week later than a flooded one does on day one.

Centre, left, right. Start a millimetre below the cuticle every time. No going back over a stroke while it's wet.

4 Wait two minutes, then two more

Second coat: the one that counts

Wait until the first coat is touch-dry and slightly matte — about two minutes at room temperature — then repeat exactly the same three strokes. Same order, same start point, same one-pass rule.

This coat is where the colour arrives. It will look glassy and even. Resist the urge to add a third to "even it out" — if the second coat looks uneven, it's still levelling. Give it thirty seconds and look again.

Exceptions. The pale ones. Chalk and Rosewater are opaque crèmes like everything else, but pale pigment in a thin water-based film usually wants a third pass before it stops reading patchy over the nail bed. Three thin coats, each left to flash off. Not two thick ones — that's a different, worse problem.

The other fourteen should be done in two. If a shade isn't covering in two, your coats are too thin or your tip needs a twist.

Two thin coats always beat one thick one. A thick coat skins over on top and stays soft underneath, then dents at midnight.

5 One minute

Clean-up: the professional-looking bit

This is the step that separates a home manicure from a manicure. Almost nobody does it, and it takes sixty seconds.

Dip a cotton bud in nail polish remover, squeeze most of it out against the neck of the bottle, and run it around the outside of each nail — the cuticle line first, then down the side walls. You are drawing the outline of the nail from the outside in, cutting a crisp edge into whatever strayed onto skin.

Do this while the polish is still slightly soft, before the top coat. A cotton bud is usually enough; if you want a finer edge, a liner pen or a flat brush dipped in remover gets right into the corners.

One bud does about three nails before it's saturated and starts smearing rather than lifting. Change it.

Left side still messy, right side cleaned. Sixty seconds is the entire difference.

6 One minute

Top coat, and cap the tip

Top coat is optional in the way that a coat is optional in March. You can skip it. You will regret it on Wednesday.

Wait three or four minutes after the second colour coat, then float a thin layer over the whole nail. Float is the operative word: press down and you'll drag colour up into the top coat and streak it.

Then cap the tip. Run the brush or tip along the free edge of the nail — the thin white strip you'd see from the side — sealing the colour underneath. Chips almost always begin at the free edge, because that's the part that meets zips, keyboards and jar lids all day. Capping is the single highest-value five seconds in this entire page.

Reapply top coat on day three. It takes a minute and buys you two more days.

The lilac line is the top coat. Notice it goes over and around the end of the nail rather than stopping at it.

7 The honest numbers

Dry time: three different things

"Dry" means three separate states and confusing them is why manicures get ruined at the forty-minute mark.

Touch-dry, about 5 minutes. You can gently touch a nail to another nail without transfer. You cannot yet put your hands in a pocket.
Safe, about 20 minutes. Bag handles, doorknobs, a phone screen. Still soft enough to take a dent from a firm press or a car key.
Fully hard, about an hour. The solvent has properly left. Washing up, tight gloves, sheets — all fine.

Cold water speeds up the touch-dry stage: thirty seconds with your fingertips under a cold tap firms the surface noticeably. It does nothing for the deeper layers, so don't take it as permission to go and change a duvet cover.

Heat is the enemy. A hairdryer on warm keeps the lacquer fluid and gives you dents an hour later. Cool setting only, or nothing at all.

Most ruined manicures happen between minute twenty and minute sixty, when it feels done and isn't.

When it goes wrong

Troubleshooting

Six failures, in rough order of how often people write to us about them. Almost all of them come back to two variables: how much lacquer is on the tip, and how thick the coat is.

It's streaky

Streaks are drag marks. You went back over a stroke that had already started to set, and the second pass pulled the first one open.

Fix: one pass per stroke, then leave it alone even if it looks wrong. Wet lacquer levels itself for about twenty seconds after you lift the tip — most of the streaks you're about to correct will vanish on their own if you just wait.

Also check: an underprimed tip drags because there isn't enough lacquer to float on. Two twists and try again.

The cuticle is flooded

Too much lacquer on the tip, or you started too high. Both are easy to fix and one of them is the priming step.

Fix now: a cotton bud with remover, before it sets. Trace from the skin inwards. See step five.

Fix next time: blot the tip on a tissue before the first nail, and start your stroke a clear millimetre below the cuticle. The lacquer will creep a little on its own — that gap is what it creeps into.

There are bubbles

Bubbles come from air trapped under a coat that skinned over before it could release. Three usual culprits:

Too thick. The surface set while the underside was still full of solvent. Thinner coats, more of them.

Too warm. Painting in a hot room, or a hairdryer, or right after a bath. Cool room, cool hands.

Shaken, not twisted. Vigorously shaking or tapping a pen whips air into the barrel. It's a pen, not a cocktail — just twist it.

It's chipping at the tip

You didn't cap the free edge, or you capped it before the colour was touch-dry and pulled it off again.

Fix: step six, properly. Run the top coat along the end of the nail so the colour layer is sealed rather than exposed. Reapply top coat on day three.

If it's chipping in the first 24 hours, that's not a tip problem, that's an oil problem — go back to degreasing in step one. Hand cream before painting is the usual offender, closely followed by painting straight out of the bath.

The pen won't flow

Almost always a new pen that hasn't been primed enough. It takes about fifteen twists to walk lacquer into a dry felt tip, and most people give up around four.

Try, in order: keep twisting over a tissue up to twenty turns; press the tip firmly against the tissue for five seconds to soften it; check the cap was fully clicked on last time, because a loose cap dries the felt out.

If you've done all three and there's still nothing after twenty-five twists, the pen is faulty and we'll replace it — tell us and don't post it back.

The colour looks different to the swatch

Three real reasons, and none of them is that the swatch lied.

Coat count. Every swatch on this site is drawn at full opacity. One coat of anything reads lighter and cooler than two, and Chalk and Rosewater need a third before they land where the swatch is.

Your nail bed underneath. A pale shade at one coat still takes a tint from the pink beneath it. Get the second and third coat on and it stops.

Your screen. Every screen is a slightly different opinion about colour. We publish the hex value on every shade page so you have at least one fixed point, but a hex is a specification, not a promise about your monitor.

The fibre tip

Five things a brush can't do easily

The straight edge of the tip is a drawing tool. Turn the pen so you're using the narrow corner and you have a fine line; use the flat and you have a broad one. That's the whole vocabulary, and it's enough for all five of these.

Rest the flat of the tip across the free edge and draw one smile line, corner to corner, without lifting. Crimson over bare nail, or over a coat of Rosewater.

The French tip upside down. Draw the crescent first with the tip corner, then fill everything below it. Cove or Merlot for the classic version.

Paint the whole nail in the lighter shade, let it dry hard, then lay the fibre tip down the centre line and fill one half. Chalk and Cove, or Rosewater and Currant.

Press the corner of the tip straight down and lift. Pressure sets the size, so vary it deliberately rather than trying to make them match. Currant on Blush.

Colour A on the top half, colour B on the bottom, then — while both are still wet — stipple the join with the tip corner, quickly. Orchid into Berry.

Two rules for all of these. Let the base dry properly — genuinely hard, not touch-dry — before you put a second colour on top, or you'll drag the first one into the second. And top coat the lot at the end, in one float, to level the edges where the two colours meet. That levelling is what makes hand-drawn nail art stop looking hand-drawn.

Pick shades for a two-tone set Browse all 16 shades

Longevity

Making it last

Most people get about five days from a pen manicure done properly, and about two from one done in a hurry. Here's where the other three days come from, roughly in order of how much they're worth.

Those numbers are our own estimate from wearing the stuff, not a measured result. Hands differ enormously and so do jobs.

1. Degrease, and cap the tip

Steps one and six. Together they're worth more than everything else on this list combined, and they cost ninety seconds.

2. Wear gloves for washing up

Hot water and detergent are a solvent bath. Nothing survives them — not gel, not a salon manicure, not this. Gloves or accept three days.

3. Top up on day three

One thin float of top coat, capping the tips again. Sixty seconds, and it resets the wear surface.

4. Stop using your nails as tools

Prising, scraping, picking off a label. Use the pad of your finger or a coin. This is also, separately, better for the nail.

5. Oil the cuticle, not the nail

Cuticle oil keeps the surrounding skin flexible so the edge of the polish isn't constantly being pulled. Keep it off the polished surface itself.

Taking it off

Removal, without wrecking the nail

Ordinary nail polish remover, acetone or not. There is no soaking, no foil, no scraping with an orange stick, because nothing here has been cured onto your nail. That is the main practical advantage of a lacquer over a gel and it shows up on removal day.

The method: soak a pad properly — a dry pad is what makes people scrub — press it flat onto the nail and hold it there for ten seconds before you move it. Ten seconds dissolves the film. Then wipe once, firmly, from cuticle to tip. Most nails come off in one pass.

Dark shades and glitter want a second pad. Change pads rather than rubbing harder with a saturated one, which just redistributes pigment into your cuticles.

Afterwards, wash your hands to get the remover off, then oil or cream them. Remover strips oil out of the nail plate as well as the polish, and that stripped feeling is temporary if you replace it and cumulative if you don't.

Please don't peel it off. It is enormously satisfying and it takes the top layer of nail plate with it. That's the thin, flaky, splitting nail people then blame on the polish. Ten seconds with a soaked pad is all it needs — see the FAQ for the longer version.

Press and wait, then one firm wipe. Scrubbing is what a dry pad makes you do.

Still stuck

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Shorter answers to the fifty most common questions, searchable.

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