Your nails can give people an indication about your sense of style, degree of attentiveness to your appearance and even your personality. Hence, it is important to always keep your nails in good shape. Unfortunately, there are a lot of women who don’t have healthy and beautiful nails, mainly because of a few very common mistakes that they unknowingly tend to commit. Here are a few common mistakes that should be avoided if you desire long and healthy nails.
Avoid filing nails in a back and forth motion: Repetitively filing your nail in a back and forth motion can cause a tear in the edges of your nail. When this happens, your nail is more likely to snag, peel and break.
The best way to file your nail is to push the filer only in a single direction i.e. from the outer edge of the nail to the inside.
Avoid over-buffing your nails: You need to be careful while you buff your nail and you should avoid pressing too hard. Just a light touch is good enough for your nail. Similar to when you file your nail, when you move the coarse side of the nail buffer on the nail’s surface, make sure that you are doing it in one direction only.
Feeling hot in your nail while buffing is an indication that you are going too hard at it and you need to ease up a bit. Buffing to hard can make the nail plate thinner, making it more likely to easily break after growing out. Moreover, this will also slow down the nail growth.
Avoid trimming your cuticles: Cutting cuticles does not give nail beds their natural protection. Moreover, cutting cuticle can also result in an infection or inflammation.
Making use of a cuticle pusher or orangewood stick is a far better way of pushing cuticles back to keep them in their place. The best time to do this is right after a shower when the cuticles are moist.
Moisturize your cuticles: Frequently washing your hands throughout the day can cause dry skin. Dry skin increases the likelihood of occurrence of hangnails and flaky cuticles. Thus, to ensure that your cuticles and the skin near your nails are kept in a clean condition, it is important to moisturize your cuticles and nails every day.
Don’t forget to apply the base coat: You should not apply nail polish directly to your nails. It is recommended to have a layer of base coat beneath it. Regularly applying nail polish without making use of the base coat can turn your nails yellow over a period of time. It will also dry your nails out every single time.
Therefore, you should always use base coat and apply nail polish only after it dries out completely.
Avoid keeping nail polish on for too long: Even if you have used base coat, it is important to take nail polish off before it becomes covered with cracks and chips. Allowing your nail polish to stay until it peels may cause your nails to crack, chip and peel. It is also recommended to take a break from wearing nail polish for about a week so that your nails can get a chance to breathe.
Correcting the mistakes mentioned above and not commenting them again can give you long, healthy and beautiful nails.