Collection: Nail Dip Powder

What is dip powder, and who is it for?

Dip powder is colored acrylic powder applied over a resin base rather than mixed with a liquid monomer. You brush on the base, dip the nail into the jar, repeat, then set the whole thing with an activator and seal it with a top coat. No lamp. Nothing cures under UV or LED, which is why dip works on a salon table and on a kitchen table equally well.

SNS was founded in 1990, and we introduced dip powder to the nail industry with the first pink and white dip system. We still mill our own powders, and we mill them fine, which is what lets the color lay down evenly instead of sitting grainy under the top coat. Our Nutri-Plus formulation puts vitamins and minerals into the base coat and into the powder itself.

This page is the whole range: 2,340 listings across four dip systems, plus the liquids that run them and the kits that bundle both. Two kinds of buyer end up here. A tech restocking a salon already knows the system and just wants the shade. Somebody doing their own nails at the kitchen table usually doesn't, and has to work out which of the four systems they're even looking at before the shade matters at all. The rest of this page is written for the second one.

The four SNS dip systems

Every powder we make falls into one of four systems. The difference is not the color. It is what the powder can do and what it needs from the liquids.

Dip-Only Powder

1,400 shades. These are formulated for dipping and nothing else, which is what lets us keep the grind fine and the coverage even. Most come in a 1oz and a 1.5oz jar, and most also have a matching gel and lacquer duo on the same listing. This is the bulk of the range and the right starting point if you only do dip.

Dip & Acrylic Powder

899 shades. The same jar works two ways: dipped over the base, or sculpted with monomer like a traditional acrylic. Techs who do both buy these so they carry one jar per shade instead of two. If you never touch monomer, you're paying for a capability you won't use, and the dip-only range is the better buy at that point.

SNS Pro, No Activator Required

250 shades, sold as the Green and Yellow Green books. The powder carries what it needs to set, so the activator step comes out of the workflow. In a salon that is a real minute saved per client, which is why this line sits in the Pro range rather than the DIY one.

Dip Powder with Matching Gel & Lacquer

866 shades where one listing gets you a powder jar and the matching gel and lacquer as a single combo variant. This is what people mean by a 3-in-1: fingers in dip, toes in lacquer, and the shade actually matches across both. Salons doing a mani and pedi together buy almost nothing else.

Four supporting ranges sit around those. Dip essentials holds the base, activator and top coat on their own. Starter kits box a whole system for a first set. French pink and white covers the classic set, and sets and bundles is where salons stock a full book at once.

How do you pick the right system?

• You only do dip. Go to dip-only powder. Finest grind, widest shade range, lowest price per jar.
• You do dip and acrylic. Go to dip and acrylic powder so one jar covers both services.
• You are working through clients back to back. Go to SNS Pro and drop the activator step.
• You want fingers and toes to match. Go to dip powder with matching gel and lacquer.
• You have never done a dip set. Go to starter kits. The liquids and the powder arrive together and the directions are in the box.
• You already own the liquids. Skip all of the above and buy the jar. The liquids outlast the powder by a wide margin.

The systems compared

The counts overlap on purpose. A shade that is both dip and acrylic capable and has a matching gel and lacquer appears in two of those rows, because it genuinely belongs in both.

How to read an SNS listing

This trips people up more than anything else on the site, so it's worth two minutes. Get it wrong and you order a gel duo when you wanted a powder jar, which is the single most common reason somebody writes to us about an order that arrived exactly as it was configured.

One listing is one shade. The variant dropdown is not more colors. It is the formats that shade is sold in, and the price moves with the format. Three patterns cover almost the whole range:

• Three variants: 1oz powder, 1.5oz powder, gel and lacquer duo. 1,036 shades use this. Example: Dream Scape DR15.
• Four variants: dip and acrylic powder, gel only, gel and lacquer duo, and a combo of powder plus gel and lacquer. 596 shades use this. Example: Blue Book #096.
• Three variants on the Pro line: no-activator powder, gel and lacquer duo, and the combo. 250 shades use this. Example: Green Book #101.

So when a filter says a shade belongs to a system, it means at least one variant on that listing is that system. Open the listing and the dropdown tells you the rest. Across the 2,340 listings on this page there are 6,746 buyable variants, which is why the filters on the left are worth using before you start scrolling.

How do you apply dip powder?

The short version. Our full DIY dip powder guide has the long one, with the timings.

1. Prep. Push the cuticles back, never cut them, shape and buff, then wipe each nail with alcohol or acetone so no oil is left on the plate.
2. Thin coat of base to three quarters of the nail, dip into Foundation powder at a 45 degree angle, tap off the excess.
3. Second coat of base up to the cuticle line, dip into Foundation again.
4. Third thin coat of base, dip into your color, then repeat base and color once more.
5. Brush the loose powder off and apply activator over the whole nail. Wait four minutes, then tap with the brush handle. A clicking sound means it is set.
6. File and buff out any bumps, rinse with water only, then a second coat of activator and three minutes.
7. Two thin coats of top coat, sealing the free edge each time, three minutes between them.

On the Pro line steps 5 and 6 collapse, because the powder does not wait on an activator.

Removal and nail care

Dip comes off with a soak, not with a pry. Picking at a lifted edge takes layers of the nail plate with it, and since those layers grow back over months rather than days, one bad removal is what most people are actually remembering when they say dip ruined their nails. Our guide on removing dip powder at home walks through the soak and the timing, and is dip powder bad for your nails covers the question underneath it.

Between sets, cuticle oil at the nail fold does more for how a manicure looks at week two than anything else you can buy. Our Signature Serum carries safflower oil, silk protein, vitamins A, D3, B5 and E, and calcium.

Jar sizes and what things cost

Powders come in a 0.5oz DIY jar, a 1oz and a 1.5oz salon jar, and larger sizes on selected lines. Liquids come in 0.34oz for home use and in bigger bottles for salons, and the size you want depends far more on how often you work than on which shade you picked, since a single base coat carries you through a great many sets. On this page single jars start at $4.75, and the full books and salon bundles run into the hundreds. If you are buying a whole book rather than shades one at a time, sets and bundles is where the volume pricing sits.

Wholesale pricing for salons is handled on account. The professional FAQ covers how that works, and the DIY FAQ answers the at-home questions.

Related collections

• Gel & Lacquer Duo Every shade that ships with a matching gel and lacquer pair.
• SNS Gel Only Soak-off gel on its own, without the powder.
• Dip Essentials Base, activator, top coat and brush cleaner sold separately.
• Dip Powder Starter Kits A whole system in one box, for a first set at home.
• Sets & Bundles Full books and salon volume pricing.

Related reads

• Gel or dip powder: which is right for you
• BIAB vs dip powder
• How to do ombre nails with a dip powder manicure
• How to safely remove dip powder at home