Loosening Your Favorite Polish – My Top Tips

Suffering from Gloop?
How to Thin Out Nail Polish

When it comes to distressing beauty disasters, your favorite polish turning gloopy is right up there with spilling foundation on your wage destroying LBD. The ensuing dismay is increased dramatically if it’s a discontinued line, or a limited edition, and you’ve been saving it for that special night out. I can’t even speak in between sobs when this happens, let alone think about picking another color!

So, if this horrendous prospect scares you, too, what can you do?

I have perfected several hacks to reinvigorate a bottle of defunct polish – you can thank me later!

First, however, it’s important to know how to mix polish. If you just shake the bottle and hope for the best, not only will your polish remain thick and unbrushable, but tiny little bubbles of air will get trapped, making any manicure likely to crack and chip. The trick is to roll the bottle gently between your palms, mixing anything you’ve added to loosen the polish, but eliminating the build up of bubbles. Actually, the warmth from your hands can sometimes revive your beloved polish without the need to add anything else.

Warm Water

In the same way that warmth from your hands can loosen thickened polish, holding the bottle in a bowl of warm water for ten minutes, making sure the lid is on tightly, can help.

Nail Polish Thinners

No manicure kit should be without a bottle of nail polish thinner. With the magical ability to save dreams and stop tears, all it takes is a couple of drops – using a dropper for convenience, dripped into the polish, and the bottle rolled gently to mix it through. If it’s too thick to mix, let the drops of thinner sit there in the polish for a few minutes, before mixing them together. And miracle of miracles, your polish lives to shine another day!

Nail Polish Remover

Even if you haven’t got thinner, every nail art aficionado will have at least one bottle of nail polish remover. Usually acetone based, this needs to be added drop by drop as too much can cause the polish to separate, and gently mixed in as before.

However, the best cure for gloopy nail polish is to avoid it glooping in the first place, and there are several points to follow:

Store your polish in a cool, dark place, or if you live in a climate that’s hot and humid, pop it in the refrigerator
Avoid keeping it in direct sunlight
Never place the bottle next to a heat source
The bathroom isn’t the place to keep your collection either. This is due to the humidity and temperature fluctuations
Make sure the neck of the bottle is clean before putting the lid back on. If there is polish around the top, it will dry and the lid won’t be airtight, allowing the polish to dry out
Always stand the bottle upright so that the polish doesn’t pool around the neck, affecting the seal

Now you have the best ways to avoid glooping, and what to do if all else fails. You need never suffer the heartbreak of losing your favorite polish ever again – unless you use it up, of course, and I can’t help you with that – sorry!