A nude nail polish can look classy and elegant — if it’s the right shade for your skin tone. If you picked the wrong color, it’ll look washed out or just plain off. Like you hit your nail with a hammer, or have a weird disease. Definitely not the look you’re aiming for.
But how do you pick the right nude nail polish, without actually swatching every shade on the salon? We can go into undertones, but that’s way too complicated to remember when you just want to sit back and enjoy your mani pedi.
Here’s a simple two-second trick that will work every single time: after narrowing down the shades into your top three picks, just hold up each bottle in the middle of your palm.
Your palms are the best indicator of your overall skin tone, and also show your undertones better than the back of your hands. If the color seems to look vibrant, you’ve “nailed” your perfect nude nail polish. (By the way, this is also a great way to pick a nude lipsticks and makeup!)
You may be asking, “My best friend and I have the same skin tone, but the nail pplish looks better on her than me!”
Well, remember what we said about undertones? You and your friend can both be medium or tan, but you have yellow undertones and your BFF’s got olive undertones. So it’s really difficult to say, “This is the best nail polish for morenas!” (Especially since a lot of polishes will look different in the bottle or after applying two or more coats.)
So trust us: do the palm test and get the perfect nude nail polish each time.