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When property developer Ella Jones has her monthly manicure, she goes bold. Brat-green tips for an alternative French manicure and glossy metallics with coloured tips are among her go-tos. “It’s a way of saying something about myself without having to actually say it,” she says. “I think it allows me to bring some fun and creativity to my look in a subtle way that doesn’t affect my whole outfit choice.”
Whether its salon manicures, nail art or DIY nail polish, striking nails are becoming increasingly ubiquitous — and acceptable — even in more conservative office environments. And people are spending more on them.
Annalisa Ludwinski, a banker in London, says that in the past five years she’s steadily moved up the Pantone colour chart from nudes to purples. She says that just as “fewer women are in dark suits these days, so more of us are experimenting with things like nail colour. Some of my colleagues go bolder, with blues and yellows — it’s just more socially acceptable”. She notes that if she’s speaking at a big conference, she’ll dial it back down to a “classic red”, however.
Estée Lauder’s Leonard Lauder popularised the term “lipstick effect” in 2001 to describe how consumers spend more on small luxuries during times of economic hardship. “Nails are the new lipstick effect,” says Thea Green, founder and CEO of Nails Inc, noting that sales of the company’s products this January were up 30 per cent on the same month in 2024. She believes this is because “painting your nails is a very cheap and easy way to make yourself feel glossy and glamorous . . . It’s a quick fix that you can change as quickly as your outfit”.
“Having painted nails makes me feel put-together and like I have some semblance of control in an otherwise quite hectic life,” says Thandi Maqubela, a London-based lawyer who spends about £60 on manicures each month. However, she admits slight concern about her level of grooming: “Have I inadvertently succumbed to the beauty tax in the workplace?”
Maqubela isn’t the only one splashing out on elaborate manicures. Ruuby, the home beauty concierge booking service, reports a 1,000 per cent increase in nail art bookings in January compared with the previous year, with gel nail manicures up 122 per cent.
As the founder of the Perfect 10 Mobile Beauty app (now part of Ruuby.com), Claire Aggarwal was used to seeing “clients who would pay £1,000 for a massage — they’d want someone to travel with them or they’d want them to be on call. But never for a manicure. That’s what’s changed”. Now, as CEO of Re:New Beauty, which distributes Bio Sculpture, she says there are clients who pay four figures to secure the services of the most in-demand manicurists (typically those with large Instagram followings) or who will travel with them.
What’s driving the demand for bolder nails? Industry insiders say customers are coming for manicures with screenshots of celebrities on their phones: Mary Simmons, owner of Wild Beauty salon in east London, said last summer Wicked actress Cynthia Erivo was a key inspiration, along with Instagram accounts dedicated to nail art. Interest in elaborate nails has spawned a whole new stream of income for online content creators such as 30-year-old Simuzar Yolchiyeva, who lives in London and has 202,000 followers on Instagram. She spends about 40 hours a week creating content — such as her popular pearl nail videos, where she creates swirly designs in white paint — and she claims she can earn up to five-figure sums a month from brand deals and affiliate links.
The latest disrupters in the nail market are innovative stick-on gels and nails. Glaize, which sells gel nails laser cut to size in its south London factory sold 100,000 sets (priced from £9.60) last year. The company aims to treble that this year, says founder Gina Farran, who quit her job in finance in 2019 to launch the venture.
Last year, Angela Lei left her legal career to start Fette, a press-on nail brand. A manicure devotee, she was worried about the damaging effect her three-weekly gel manicure habit was having on her nails, when a friend showed her some stick-on nails from Korea. “I was amazed by the options available in most drugstores in Asia,” Lei says.
Despite striking options such as chrome finishes, the press-on nail bestsellers are muted, natural and short. While one segment of the nail market wants out-there talons, another — perhaps concerned about nails weakened by gels and the risk of an allergic reaction to the chemicals in gel nails — want more vegan and plant-based nail formulations, and oils. Some people will always want to play it safe.
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