How to Remove Gel Nail Polish at Home

A couple of weeks ago, I published a post on how to apply gel nail polish at home, so today here’s the promised follow-up, on how to remove gel nail polish – which, to be totally honest, is actually harder. Not only is it time-consuming and a bit messy, it can also be pretty rough on your nails – which is why many people choose to have their gel polish removed at a salon. While that’s definitely a great option to consider, though, if you want to try doing it at home, this post will show you how to do it.

As with many things in life, there’s a hard way to do this and a (slightly) easier way to do it. I’m going to show you the hard way first, even although I totally recommend you do it the easy way. There’s also a way to do it which involves me taking decent photos to accompany the post, and a way which involves me taking blurry, one-handed iPhone shots, because my other hand was covered in tinfoil at the time. I’m going to go with the latter option, so without further preamble, here’s what you’ll need to remove your gel nail polish at home…

How to remove gel nail polish at home:

01.
ACETONE REMOVER

The short story of this post is that you remove gel nail polish by soaking it in acetone. As you can see, I have a bottle of Gellux remover, but acetone is the main ingredient in many regular nail polish removers, so one of those should work, too: just don’t, you know, try to use an acetone free one, or that’ll totally defeat the purpose.

02.
LINT FREE PADS

Our old friend, lint free pads: we last met them in my post on how to apply gel polish, and now here they are to help you remove it. And so the circle is complete!

03.
TINFOIL

You’ll use this to create a tinfoil helmet, to protect you against the alien invasion when it comes. Oh, OK, OK: it’s to hold the lint free pads in place. Spoilsport.

04.
AN ORANGE STICK

Or any other implement you can use to gently lift the polish from your nail.

05.
A NAIL FILE

I presume you’re all familiar with nail files, right? Right.

You’re going to be working with acetone here, so before you get started, it’s a good idea to either lay down an old towel, or set up some other area where you’re not going to destroy anything if you spill it. Next, cut the cotton pads into squares large enough to cover each nail, and tear the tinfoil into strips big enough to wrap around a finger:

Next, you’re going to take your nail file, and use it to gently buff the surface of each nail. The aim here to is literally scratch the surface of the gel polish, to make it easier for the acetone to sink in: I also find it helps to clip the ends of the nails, which kind of “opens up” the layers of polish, and lets the acetone in. You might also want to apply some cuticle oil, or another barrier cream at this point: as you can imagine, soaking your nails in acetone won’t just remove the polish, it’ll also really dry out your cuticles, so while the cuticle oil is mostly here to be used once the polish is gone, I like to put some on first, to try to mitigate the damage.

With that done, you simply soak each square in acetone, apply it to the nail, and then wrap the foil around the tip of your finger, to keep the cotton pad in place:

When you’re done, your hand will look like this: wave!

I recommend doing one hand at a time: not only is it fiddly to apply the tinfoil nail helmets when you’re already wearing a set, it’s also hard to do anything with your fingers once they’re in place. If you do both hands simultaneously, I guarantee that the second you finish installing the final “helmet”, you’ll discover you urgently need to do something with your hands. And that’ll be no fun, will it?

Once the acetone is in place, you wait. Most people will tell you to allow the nails to soak for at least 20 minutes. I find it normally takes a little longer than that, especially with glitter polish, which I was wearing here, but once you’ve done it a couple of times, you’ll get to know roughly how long you’ll need to keep the acetone in place. (I’ve heard that heating the remover can help speed up the process, but I’ve never tried, so have no idea if that’s true…) When you remove it, your polish will look something like this:

Nice, huh?

From here, it’s simply a case of using your orange stick to gently lift the polish from the nail. The main thing to remember here is to NOT scrape at the nail, no matter how tempting it is – if you try to scrape it off, it’ll damage the nail underneath, so if you’re having trouble removing, it’s better to re-soak your cotton pads and replace them for a few more minutes. Once you have all the polish off, it’s time to seriously pamper your nails, so feel free to go to town with the cuticle oil, and any other nail treatment you fancy. If you haven’t scraped at them, your nails should be looking reasonably healthy, but you have just been soaking them in acetone, so a bit of pampering doesn’t hurt. As I mentioned in my last post, I like to give them a bit of a rest between gel manicures, rather than just immediately re-applying more polish, but that’s obviously up to you.

So, that was the hard way to remove gel nail polish. There’s also a slightly easier way, which involves buying yourself a box of these:

As you can see, these are ready-made foil wraps: basically, the cotton pad is already stuck to the foil, so all you have to do is soak it in acetone and apply it. I bought this box on eBay for about £1.50 delivered, and while it might seem a bit silly to pay for something you can do yourself, for that kind of price, they’re definitely worth it, and make the whole process that bit easier. They also allow us to go back to using the foil for cooking, rather than for nail polish removal, which is an added benefit.

And that’s how to remove gel nail polish at home: or that’s how I do it, at least!