When you walked in for your last manicure, chances are it was business as usual with the nail tech following standard operating procedure. They likely soaked your hand in a bowl of warm water before getting down to the business of cuticle removal and shaping your nails and topping it all off with the nail lacquer of your choice.
In the last few years, however, some nail techs and nail salons have started to move away from wet manicures opting for dry manicures instead. And after we did a little digging, it looks like dry manicures (also known as waterless or soak-free manicures) may come with their own set of benefits that are worth a closer look.
What Is A Dry Manicure
Just as it sounds, a dry manicure is one where the nail tech skips the soak. Instead of using warm water to soften the skin and facilitate the manicure, the nail techs use an assortment of lotions, oils, and heat treatments the clean and hydrate the skin before diving in.
Benefits Of A Dry Manicure
While the idea of a dry manicure may seem “out there,” it looks like there are quite a few benefits that come with this shake-up. Here are four benefits of a dry manicure.
Your Polish Lasts Longer
Those on team “dry manicure,” would argue that this type of manicure prolongs the life of your polish. As you might know, soaking the nail in water causes it to soften, it but it also causes it to bloat and expand. While your nail doesn’t necessarily have enough time to shrink back down, during the course of the manicure, it will continue to do so long after your polish was applied. As your nail dries out and returns to its normal size (over the following days and weeks), the adhesion of the polish is compromised, and that leads to premature chipping and peeling.
Minimize Cuticle Issues
Just as your nails absorb a lot of water when they’re soaked in water, so too do your cuticles. A plumped cuticle makes it more difficult to notice dry skin around your cuticle, and accurate removal during your manicure becomes increasingly difficult. Once the cuticles dry, however, they will continue to peel back days after the manicure. When this happens is easy to see how a customer may think that their manicure was botched.
Less Time Consuming
Dry manicures are generally faster than traditional manicures because they skip the time-consuming process of soaking the nail. So, if you usually schedule your manicures on the weekends when you have time, you could try a dry manicure and get it done on your lunch hour instead.
Keeps Contamination To A Minimum
When busy nail salons are quickly moving from client to client, it may be at the expense of cleanliness, and the risk of cross-contamination in nail salons is real. Truth be told, t’s not unheard of for people to get bacterial or fungal infections from nail salons, and water, as you may know, is one of the easiest transport systems for this type of contamination. So, it stands to reason that by skipping the soak, you’re also skipping any possibility of winding up with a little more than you bargained for.
It’s highly likely that with every manicure you’ve had thus far, soaking your nail was part of the process, and anything less was just considered poor service. But dry manicures are catching on. When you take a look at the benefits of dry manicures, it would seem that in the end, you may end up with a better manicure and color that lasts longer than ever before.
