Collection: Gel Polish, All Brands

What is on this page?

Every gel polish we carry, from four brands, in one grid. Gel polish is color that cures under a lamp instead of drying in air: it goes on over a cured base, needs two thin coats to reach full opacity, and comes off with an acetone soak rather than a wipe. That is the whole category, and the differences between the brands below are about which problem each one was built to solve.

It is a large page. The chips above jump to a brand or a finish, and the table is the fastest way to decide which line you actually want.

The four ranges

Specialty finishes sit beside them: cat eye for a magnetic band, pearl gel for an even pearl glow and LuxeHybrid for a lightweight sculpting gel that also wears as color.

Why does matching matter so much?

Because the most common request in a salon is not a color, it is the same color twice. A client with gel on her hands and polish on her toes notices immediately if the two are a shade apart. Our own range is built for that: every SNS shade code exists as a dip powder, a GelStar gel and a Nail Lacquer that we match, over 400 colors in total, which is why the Gel & Lacquer Duos and the matched systems pages exist. If matching across systems is not part of your menu, the Lavis drops give more color story per order instead.

What HEMA-free means, and who needs it

HEMA is the small monomer most gel polishes use to bond and cure, and it is the ingredient named most often when the skin around the nail reacts to gel. Sensitivity builds with exposure, so the group most likely to develop it is not clients but techs, who handle gel every working day. TPO is the photoinitiator that turns lamp light into a cure. The A'DOR catalog leaves both out, and our own cat eye and builder gel lines do too. We describe that as what the formula excludes, never as a promise that nobody can react, because no cosmetic can honestly promise that.

How do you apply gel polish so it lasts?

1. Prep decides everything. Push the cuticle back, take the shine off the plate with a fine buffer, dust, dehydrate. Most peeling is prep, not product.
2. Base, cured. One thin coat from Base & Top Gel, or a rubber base if the nail is thin and flexes.
3. Two thin color coats. Thin enough to see the nail through the first. Cure between them. One thick coat wrinkles and cures unevenly.
4. Cap the free edge with color and again with top. An uncapped edge is where chipping starts.
5. Top, cured. Wipe if your top leaves a tacky layer; use a no-wipe top if chrome or foil is going over it.
6. Cure properly. Lamps and wattage guidance are under Nail Lamps; a weak or dirty lamp is the quiet cause of a lot of "bad gel".

Removal is a soak-off: file the top to break the seal, wrap in acetone for ten to fifteen minutes, push the softened gel away in passes. Never pry.

Gel, dip or lacquer?

Gel cures under a lamp, gives the glossiest finish and soaks off. Dip powder sets with activator, needs no lamp and is usually the fastest full set. Lacquer air-dries and is the take-home bottle a client can touch up herself. Most salons run at least two, and our range is built so the same shade code can appear in all three. Our comparison for clients is gel or dip powder, and the three-way version is dip powder vs gel vs acrylic.

Finishes beyond a plain cream

A cream is the working shade of any wall, but the finishes are what get photographed and what carry an upcharge. Cat eye is a magnetic band pulled through the color with a magnet while the gel is wet, and it needs nothing but that magnet to sell as a premium service. Pearl gel gives an even, shell-like glow with no magnet at all. Shimmers and glitters run through the A'DOR Signature catalog and the Lavis drops, and chrome or foil goes over any cured gel as a separate step. All of them cure the same way and sit under the same top coat, so adding a finish to the menu costs a product, not a process.

Stocking a gel wall

• Start from what repeats. Nudes, one true red, a deep vamp and two seasonal shades will serve more clients than twenty novelty colors.
• Choose a spine. Either match your dip wall (SNS) or buy by drop (Lavis). Mixing both from day one makes reordering harder than it needs to be.
• Add HEMA-free as an option, not a replacement. A dozen A'DOR shades mirroring your best sellers covers the clients who need it.
• One base and top for the wall. Everything here cures under the same lamp, so there is no reason to stock a base per brand.
• Swatch on sticks. Screens shift color, shimmers most of all; a painted stick is what a client should choose from.

Related collections

• Gel & Lacquer Duo Matched gel and lacquer pairs by shade code.
• Cat Eye Gel, All Brands Every magnetic gel we carry.
• Base & Top Gel What goes under and over every gel color.
• Builder Gel, All Brands Structure under the color.
• Nail Art Chrome, foil, stickers and art gels to finish a set.

Related reads

• Gel or dip powder manicure: which is right for you?
• Dip powder vs gel vs acrylic
• How SNS approaches a safer UV gel manicure
• Nail colors for every skin tone