How To Get Your Perfect Nail Paint Shade : Technique, Tips and Tricks

Getting Your Perfect Nail Polish Shade: Technique, Tips and Tricks

I’ve loved nail polishes from even before I could spell “nail polish”. But in spite of this love, I don’t have too many nail colours with me at any time. There is a reason for my smallish collection – I’m very picky about my nail colours. Due to this, if a nail colour is a bit different from what I would have liked it to be, it bothers me, at least a little. In such cases, if I have an idea of how I would like that shade to be, I try my hand at mixing another nail colour into that one. Sometimes this process works, giving me the perfect shade; sometimes it doesn’t, ending up in a murky mess. But if you are as choosy as I am and have at least one nail colour you can’t stand the sight of, I urge you to give nail colour mixing a shot.☺

Why one should consider mixing nail polish shades:

• Sometimes you look at a nail colour and wonder if it were a bit more pinkish or a bit more brownish, wouldn’t it be your HG nail polish? Nail colour mixing can help you achieve that HG shade.
• Sometimes a nail polish is too runny and/or transparent. Mixing an opaque shade from the same colour family thickens and saturates the transparent shade.
• Sometimes you end up buying too many similar shades in the hope of finding your one perfect shade but it remains elusive. Nail polish mixing can save you some money and heartache there.
• Sometimes you want to match your nail colour to your lipstick or a favourite dress. In that case, modifying a nail enamel shade that is a close colour match to these objects can do the trick.
• The finish obtained from actually mixing nail colours is far better than that from layering a nail colour on top of another right on the nail. The latter can sometimes look streaky with the bottom nail colour playing peek-a-boo from underneath.

The process is simple. First you pick out the nail colour that you want to modify. Then look for the deepest and simplest colour that would bring this shade closer to your liking. Say, if you think that a true peach enamel does not brighten up your hands as much as you would like, then adding a touch of pink would probably do the trick. Then, pick out the richest, deepest pink that you can find in your collection. That way just a little bit will be needed for the job. Pour a drop or two of the original nail colour on a spare plastic sheet. Add a touch of pink nail colour and mix. Check if the resulting nail colour is of your liking. Test this a few times with different proportions of the deeper shade. Even try a few different pinks to check if they result in a better shade. Once you are sure, start out by adding a few drops of the darker shade into the lighter shade bottle. Give the bottle a good shake and check the result. If the shade pleases you, stop. Else rinse and repeat.

Pink nail polish (Street Wear Metro girl) to be added to the peach one (Street Wear Sand Stone). I love the peach one, but after using up two bottles of it, I want something different from it.☺

Test mixing of different shades to the peach shade. Top row, rightmost is the winner!☺

The thumb shows the original shade (peach) and the index finger the modified shade (peachy pink). The picture doesn’t do justice to the beauty of the resulting colour. It is actually pink with coral undertones.☺

Tips and tricks:

1. Results are more predictable if the shades mixed are basic colours (such as basic red, black, pink) instead of complex such as a peachy-pink-with-a-slight-brownish-undertone-with-a-touch-of-gold mixed into a similarly complex shade.
2. Pour a darker shade into a lighter shade bottle. This uses up less colour to reach the right shade.
3. For test mixing, use a spare plastic bag or a china dish. Using paper to test shades can cause the paper to not only absorb some of the colour, but also ball up sometimes, introducing tiny specks of paper into the nail enamel.
4. If you are testing with many colours, it is a good idea to create 3 dots of colour for each test – one each for the colours mixed and a third one for the resulting colour. Otherwise it is easy to forget what shades you mixed to get to the perfect shade.
5. Ensure that the quantity of the nail colour you are adding to your main colour can fit into the bottle. This will prevent spillage. Also, it is not a good idea to fill the nail colour up to the brim since you have to keep space for the brush to go into the bottle without spilling any of the product.
6. Ensure that there is minimum nail paint sticking to the mouth of the bottle since that paint can dry up and jam the bottle.
7. It is easy to get into a “mad scientist” mode where you just can’t stop mixing shades in order to get to the “perfect” shade. Ask me how I know. 😉 Don’t try too hard. If you have reached a good enough shade, be happy and try to stop at that.
8. While you are busy mixing and matching, make sure you are not keeping the nail polish bottles open to the air for too long. This can dry out the nail colour in the bottle.
9. Place a newspaper or a spare sheet under your working area just in case a nail colour bottle spills or breaks.
10. Try not to mix more than 2 or maximum 3 colours to a nail colour. Mixing too many shades can just make the resulting colour murky and confusing. Also, it makes it difficult to reproduce the results.
11. Do not judge the resulting colour from how the bottle looks from the outside. Usually some nail colour dries and sticks to the walls of the bottle, so even after mixing, the bottle may still seem to have the old colour in it.
12. Mix only a little bit at a time, say 5 drops at a time and give the bottle a good shake before deciding to add more colour to it.
13. Pick nail colours that are not drying up already. It does no good to add a good nail colour to a bottle that is already drying up. That is not going to revive the nail polish.
14. In my opinion, there is no need to add thinner or nail polish remover to the nail colours. Usually nail colours mix uniformly just by shaking them well.
15. It helps to know a little bit about the colour wheel and shade mixing. Such as red plus white makes pink, red plus blue makes purple, red plus black makes brown etc. This information can be easily found on the Internet.

Do you mix nail polishes to get a better shade?