When the trend towards naturalness appeared in the beauty world, the fashion for short nails also began to experience a renaissance. And now for the second year that short nails are at the height of fashion, only the shape of the nails changes. If in 2022 square or rectangular nails were fashionable, but this season preference is given to a more natural shape - round or oval nails.
During this time, nail art masters have developed a huge number of different designs that can satisfy the most complex requests. In this article we will talk in detail about the features of manicure on short nails, discuss the most fashionable shades for short nail designs, and also talk about the most stylish manicure ideas for short nails.
Features of manicure
Manicure for short nails has several nuances:
- The design should be concise and should not be overloaded with details.
- It is better to choose a varnish that is bright or contrasting with the skin color
- The tip of the nails is usually flat, square or slightly rounded
- For manicure it is better to use from 1 to 4 colors.
- It is better to combine camouflage polish with some contrasting color to highlight your nails.
When choosing a coating, several nuances should be taken into account. Manicure with varnish on short nails is easier to do at home, but this coating lasts less long. For varnish, it is better to choose light colors or experiment with complex designs - if something doesn’t work out, it will be easier to erase.
A gel manicure will require a special lamp, but this coating will look neat within 1-2 weeks. This may be relevant for girls leading an active lifestyle. Short nails in combination with gel polish are, above all, a very practical option.
How to properly paint your nails with varnish - subtleties and secrets
Above we looked at the main points of how to paint your nails correctly, then we will tell you some secrets so that your manicure is at the highest level.
1. Before applying varnish, lubricate your hands with cream. This will allow you to easily remove any polish that gets on your skin. 2. Nails must be cleaned and dried before applying polish. If you applied cream to your hands and nails, then before applying polish, you need to wipe the nail plates with nail polish remover and then dry your nails. 3. Use only fresh varnish. If the polish starts to dry out, then you won’t be able to get a beautiful manicure with it, no matter how hard you try. 4. The varnish must not be diluted. 5. Before applying, the bottle of varnish should be shaken thoroughly. 6. Before doing a manicure, you need to choose a convenient place. Make sure your elbow does not hang over the table. Install proper lighting. You must clearly see your nails for the manicure to be successful. 7. You need to paint your nails starting with your little finger. 8. To paint each nail, the brush must be dipped into the varnish again and again, and the excess varnish must be carefully removed. 9. It is best to apply varnish in two layers. When applying the second layer, flaws that were made during the application of the first are usually removed. 10. To avoid touching the cuticle, it is recommended to step back a few millimeters from it. 11. First, paint the nail in the center, and then along the edges. 12. After applying your manicure, sit quietly for a few minutes. Remember, the more coats of polish you apply, the longer your manicure will take to dry. Please note that the varnish must dry naturally.
How to paint your nails correctly video.
Manicure colors
When choosing a manicure color, it is important to remember that bright, contrasting colors emphasize the beauty of the nail shape and visually make it more correct and neat. Light nude colors, on the contrary, blur the contour of the nail, visually expanding the fingers.
At the same time, options such as camouflage polish, soft pink or peach tones make the hands more natural. Manicure on them becomes almost invisible.
The color of the varnish also depends on the season. Summer is a great time for bright experiments; neon colors would be appropriate here. These options are good to combine with a contrasting geometric pattern or negative space.
Autumn manicure for short nails involves the use of dark, languid colors: red, burgundy, purple. A play of textures would be appropriate here: a magnetic gel with a cat’s eye effect, a combination of matte and glossy top, the use of a new product for 2021 – a velvet coating.
Ideas for using flowers on short nails:
- A combination of pink and black or highlighting 1-2 fingers with a black pattern
- Camouflage background combined with bright red, burgundy or black jacket
- Red, crimson or purple polish combined with negative space holes
- White nails with geometric contrast pattern
- Pastel colors combined with glitter or rubbing
Festive look
For a special occasion, you can choose coatings in rich and sparkling shades. Even such ambiguous varnishes as black, bright red, and gold look good on short nails (on long nails such a manicure can look predatory and defiant).
To make a New Year's manicure for small nails, you can use additional decor in the form of metal elements, half beads, and rhinestones.
The manicure in the photo above was done using gel polish. It looks impressive and solemn, but the technology is extremely simple.
Cover your nails with base and dry in a lamp for 5 minutes. Apply black polish to the nails of your ring fingers and red to the rest. Remember: the first layer should not be placed close to the edges and cuticle, it is better to retreat a little. Dry your nails. Apply a second coat, covering the area close to the nail growth line, and also sealing the end. Dry the varnish again. If desired, use a sealer varnish.
That's all, all that remains is to glue the decorative elements with special glue.
French manicure
French manicure is a classic for all nail shapes. On short nails, where the tip is most often square, it is better to draw a thin 1-3 mm smile zone with minimal bending.
For a classic French manicure, you should use camouflage polish and white color for the stripes, which will make your nails as natural as possible. Other colors of the smile area would also be appropriate here. As photos of manicures for short nails demonstrate, burgundy, purple, dark blue and black colors go well with camouflage polish.
A crimson background with a white stripe or a combination of similar colors will look elegant:
- Lilac and pink
- Burgundy and pink
- Purple and lilac
French on short nails can be enlivened by highlighting 3-4 fingers with a single-color coating in the color of the smile zone on other nails. Another option: use black for the smile area, and make the background pink or peach. At the same time, highlight one finger on each hand with black lace or an ornate pattern.
A French jacket with a smile zone made of sparkles or a glossy coating on a matte background looks elegant. To combine matte and glossy textures, it is better to choose dark colors.
Advice. You need to be very careful when combining a moon manicure with a French manicure on short nails. So these types of designs can merge on the hands, which means the necessary accents will not be placed.
Manicure tape
Narrow strips with an adhesive backing open up enormous scope for creativity. Before manicuring small nails using tape, cut it into small strips slightly longer than your nail. Apply base coat. Apply the tape in any random order, cover it with contrasting varnish and let it dry completely, then carefully remove the glued elements.
Paper-based masking tape is great for manicure. You can use small scissors to cut out any decor to use in your design.
Geometric pattern
Fashionable manicure for short nails in 2022 involves a contrasting geometric pattern. This type of design goes perfectly with camouflage polish, which makes the nails look natural, but at the same time creates accents on them.
Advice. To make your hands look more graceful, it is important to use predominantly vertical lines.
Ideas for geometric manicure on short nails:
- Elongated sharp triangles - 2-3 triangles of parallel thin lines
- Two inverted mirror triangles with intersection
- Vertical lines along a plate of contrasting varnish, glitter or foil
- Triangular contrast jacket
- Parallel asymmetrical stripes, complemented by 1-3 dots or small rhinestones.
Advice. To make the drawing look elegant, it is better to do it on 1-3 fingers, covering the remaining fingers with a single color. The small pattern on all your fingers will make your eyes ripple.
Crackle
Craquelure polish is a great idea for small nails. The manicure looks elegant, and the technology is simple, which is why this design is in great demand.
Apply a base coat in a contrasting color. This color will show through crackle cracks.
Under no circumstances should you start working with craquelure varnish until the base one has completely dried. Otherwise, cracking, the crackle will pull the base along with it, exposing the nail plate. This option looks unaesthetic, and the durability will be very small.
The thicker the craquelure layer, the larger the cracks will be. The thin one will crack into small cobwebs. Both options are acceptable, each is good in its own way.
After drying, the layer of craquelure varnish must be covered with a fixative, otherwise the scales will quickly fall off.
This beautiful manicure for small nails can be combined with other varieties, for example, combined with painting.
Bright design
Bright colors, rhinestones and sparkles are best used on gel manicure for short nails. This option will be practical and elegant at the same time.
Important! Rhinestones allow you to diversify your manicure and decorate it quickly and easily. It is enough to put just one rhinestone and your hands will already become elegant. However, you should not overload short nails with rhinestones, as this may look vulgar.
Metal strip technique
Narrow metallized ribbons of various colors are found in abundance in nail art supply stores today. You can use them to create a stylish manicure for small nails.
Prepare varnish of two matching shades, a transparent fixative varnish, a metal strip cut into pieces, as well as a blade and tweezers. It is more convenient to start working with the nails of the ring fingers. Cover them with a layer of varnish, let them dry, apply a second coat and immediately use tweezers to arrange the strips in any order. Let dry. When the varnish has completely hardened, carefully cut off the excess ends with a blade and apply a layer of sealer.
Apply polish to the rest of your nails and dry. Metal strips can be used for both gel manicure and regular manicure.
Options for using rhinestones
- Three rhinestones in the cuticle area
- One rhinestone in the smile zone on a French manicure
- Several small rhinestones in an asymmetrical triangle on the tips of the nails and in the cuticle area
- Using triangular or square rhinestones
For short nails, rubbing or glitter is also suitable. You can rub 1-2 fingers. The rub goes well with the matte finish on other nails. The striking difference in textures will create a mysterious and enchanting effect.
You can decorate part of the nail with glitter:
- Create a smooth gradient from the cuticle to the end of the tip with different glitter densities.
- Draw playful vertical stripes or sharp triangles
- Highlight a hole or create a smile area
Short nails, despite their simplicity, allow you to apply different types of designs and always remain beautiful.
Stamping
If you want a DIY manicure on short, small nails that looks like it was done by a professional, stamps can be a great choice. You will need a stamping kit and varnishes of two colors. You can use both gel and regular ones.
Cover all nails with base color polish and wait until dry. Apply a drop or two of contrasting varnish to the embossed surface of the disc, apply pressure with a spatula so that the varnish fills the recess evenly. Press the stamp onto the disc and then carefully place the imprint on the nail. After drying, you will need to remove any remaining varnish from the skin and cuticles. If you are using gel polish, dry each layer under a lamp for 10-15 minutes, and be sure to use a sealer at the end. Then the manicure will look neat and fresh for a long time.
Photo of the best manicure for short nails
How to properly paint short nails at home?
- First of all, you need to learn an important rule - under no circumstances should a decorative coating be applied to a “raw” untreated plate. This causes the plates to deteriorate, peel and change their natural shade. Varnish should only be applied to a plate that has been prepared and protected with a colorless coating.
- If you have an uneven nail surface, it is advisable to sand it before applying polish. To do this, you need to purchase a special grinding block at the pharmacy, or use a rough nail file.
- The “steps” look ugly in principle, and the colored coating only emphasizes this defect. Therefore, if you are faced with the question of how to carefully paint short nails, you must definitely prepare a plate.
- If there are problems with its integrity and health, it is important to use special solutions and enamels for treatment.
- It is also worth turning to natural vegetable oils. Apricot and almond oils are especially effective in therapy.
How to properly paint very short nails?
After all the basic preparations with cuticle removal and sanding, cover the plates with a transparent base. Degrease their surfaces first. Apply colored varnish only after the base has completely dried and set.
What is the advantage of a small plate?
A small nail plate does not always mean ugly nails. In fact, it even has a number of advantages. Of course, you can always add chic long artificial plates to short nails, but this is not the same at all. After all, an artificial nail or your own long one can always break, but a natural short nail is unlikely to let you down. That is, your nails will always be in excellent condition.
Of course, the excellent condition of short nails depends not only on their non-brittleness. This point is also affected by the well-groomed cuticles and nails, an even, beautiful manicure.
In addition, naturalness and naturalness are now in fashion, that is, short nails as well. Designers come up with interesting nail art options especially for small nails.
Editor's choice: Design of extended nails 2022, fresh ideas for manicure
Stylish yellow-green design for short nails
Lovers of color coating should pay attention to the yellow-green combination. It can be bright and in this case it is ideal for creating a themed spring-summer manicure. That is, with various designs in the form of flowers, butterflies, the sea coast and much more. This design also looks great in muted shades. In this case, the manicure will be neutral and suitable for any time of year. You can choose any drawings at your own discretion. And small decorative inserts in the form of rhinestones or sparkles are perfect for manicure.
