Press-on nails, answered

Two to four weeks per wear when you glue them on, and three to seven days if you use adhesive tabs instead. Glue is the difference: the gel glue in every box bonds to a buffed, oil-free nail and holds through showers and hand-washing, while tabs sit on top of the nail and give up as soon as they meet steam or lotion. Where you land inside that two-to-four-week window depends less on the nails than on your prep — a nail that was still oily when you glued it will lift in days no matter how good the set is.

Yes to all three, with one rule: avoid long soaks. Glued press-ons are fine in the shower, in the sea and in a pool, because brief contact with water does not break a cured glue bond. What does break it is prolonged immersion — a forty-minute bath, a hot tub, or a sink full of dishes with bare hands — which softens the adhesive and creeps water under the free edge. Wear gloves for dishes and long baths, dry your hands properly afterwards, and you will get the full wear out of a set.

Yes, easily in short and medium lengths, and with about a week of adjustment in long. Short and medium sets barely change your hand position, so most people type at full speed on day one. Long and extra-long sets shift you onto the pads of your fingers, which is a real adjustment for a few days and then stops being one. If you type for a living and this is your first set, start short — you can always go longer next time.

Almost always oil on the natural nail, and after that a size that is too small. Glue cannot bond through the natural oils in your nail plate or through hand cream, so the fix is buffing off the shine and wiping each nail with alcohol right before you glue. The second cause is fit: a tip narrower than your nail bed leaves the sidewalls exposed, and every knock lands on that edge until it peels. Overlapping the cuticle, using too little glue, or getting the set wet within an hour of application will each cost you days as well.

Yes — a set is good for roughly three to five wears if you remove it by soaking rather than prying. After removal, push the old glue off the underside of each tip with a wooden stick, wipe the inside with alcohol, and put the set back in its tray so the tips do not warp. What ends a set is usually not the artwork but the fit: filing the sides down for a snugger fit on wear one narrows the tip permanently, so file conservatively if you want the set back.

Soak your hands in warm soapy water for ten to fifteen minutes, then rock each tip loose with a wooden stick — never pull. Add a few drops of the removal oil that comes in every box around the cuticle and free edge before soaking; it travels under the tip and dissolves the glue bond faster than water alone. If a nail still resists, soak it again rather than forcing it. Prying is the single most common way people damage their nails with press-ons, and it takes off layers of your own nail plate along with the glue.

No, not when they are applied and removed properly — the damage people blame on press-ons is nearly always caused by pulling them off. A press-on sits on the surface of the nail plate and is held by an adhesive that dissolves in warm water and oil, so nothing has to be filed or drilled off your natural nail the way it does with acrylic or hard gel. The two things that do cause harm are prying a stuck tip off and over-buffing before application: buff only until the shine is gone, never until the nail feels thin or warm.

Not for your nails' sake, but a day or two between sets is a good habit. Your nail plate is not alive and does not need to breathe, so back-to-back wear is not inherently harmful. What a short break does buy you is a chance to see the nail properly — to check for lifting-related white patches, to oil the cuticles, and to skip one round of buffing. If you wear press-ons continuously, at least skip the buffing step every other set.

Yes, and short natural nails are actually the easier case — you only need a few millimetres of flat nail plate for glue to grab. Bitten nails work too, as long as the skin around them is not broken or sore; never glue over an open cut. The one thing to watch is width: bitten nails are often wider than they are long, so measure across the nail bed rather than guessing from length, and expect to need a larger tip than you would think.

Trim them back to a short free edge before you apply — a press-on glued over a long natural nail lifts within days. The tip is shaped to sit flush against the nail plate, and any natural nail extending past the nail bed levers the tip away from the surface every time you use your hands. Cut straight across, file the edge smooth so nothing catches inside the tip, and keep the length you like in the press-on instead.

Measure the width of each nail bed in millimetres at its widest point and match that number to a size — most people are somewhere around size 1 or 2 on the thumb, 3 to 4 on the index, 2 to 3 on the middle, 4 to 5 on the ring and 6 to 7 on the pinky. There is no single size for a person: every one of your ten nails gets measured separately, and your two hands are often not identical. Lay a strip of paper across the nail, mark both edges where the nail meets the skin, and read the gap off a ruler. Our sizing guide has the full millimetre-to-size chart for all ten nails.

Take the larger tip and file the sides down — you can remove material, you cannot add it. A tip that is slightly too wide can be filed flush with your sidewalls in about thirty seconds; a tip that is too narrow leaves strips of exposed nail on both edges, and those edges are where lifting starts. File the inside walls, not the underside, and stop as soon as the tip drops into the nail bed without pressing into the skin. A tip that pinches the sidewall will hurt by hour three and lift by day three.

A correct tip spans your nail bed from sidewall to sidewall without touching the skin on either side and sits flat with no rocking. Press it on dry before you reach for glue: if you can see your own nail peeking out at the corners it is too small, and if it rides up over the skin at the sides it is too big. Rock it gently side to side — any movement means the curve of the tip does not match the curve of your nail, and that set will pop off early no matter how much glue you use.

Ready-made sets come in round, square and almond, in short, medium and long, and every product page lists the exact shape and length of that set. Custom commissions open the range up further: almond, oval, square, coffin and stiletto, in extra short, short, medium, long or extra long. If you are new to press-ons, a short or medium round or almond is the most forgiving place to start, because a shorter tip has less leverage against the glue bond.

You send a moodboard and a brief, we send back a digital mockup within 24 hours, and once you approve it the set is hand-painted to your measurements and shipped. The brief is where the work happens: three to five reference images plus your must-haves — colours, motifs, the occasion, anything you want avoided — get you a far closer first mockup than a one-line description. You also choose shape, length, finish and palette, and pick an artist if you have a preference. One round of revisions on the mockup is included before painting starts.

Custom sets start at $18 and most land between $26 and $40. The base covers a square tip in a single design; from there it is +$1 for a round shape or +$2 for almond, oval, coffin or stiletto, +$1 for a matte finish or +$3 for chrome, +$3 for charms, +$6 for 3D art, and $1 to $8 depending on how many separate designs you want across the ten nails. The price updates live as you build the set, so you never see a number at checkout you have not already seen.

About five days door to door in the US: a mockup within 24 hours of your brief, two to three days of painting once you approve it, then shipping. The clock only starts on the painting when you sign off on the mockup, so replying quickly to the mockup is the single biggest thing you control. If you are working to a date — a wedding, a birthday, a trip — say so in the brief rather than hoping, and order with a week of slack.

Yes — one free revision round on the digital mockup is included, and further rounds are $10 each. Revisions happen before any paint touches a tip, which is exactly why the mockup stage exists: changing a colour or swapping a motif on screen costs nothing, changing it on a painted set means starting over. Once you approve the mockup, painting begins and the design is locked.

Ready-made sets are $18 to $30, and custom commissions start at $18 with most finishing between $26 and $40. Price tracks the painting: a minimalist set like Lavender Whisper is $25, a hand-painted statement set like Strawberry Gingham or Tropical Escape is $30. Because a set is reusable three to five times, the number that actually matters is cost per wear — a $24 set worn three times works out to about $4 a week, against roughly $17 to $29 a week for salon gel.

Every box contains the full set of hand-painted tips, gel glue, and a bottle of removal oil. That is everything you need to put the set on and take it off again without a trip to a salon or a second order. Keep the tray the nails ship in — it is the safest place to store a set between wears, and tips left loose in a drawer warp out of shape.

A custom set is about five days door to door in the US, of which two to three are painting; ready-made sets skip the painting stage and post sooner. Every set is made by hand, so an order has two separate clocks — studio time and transit time — and only the second one is out of our hands. Current dispatch windows and delivery options are listed on the shipping and returns page, and your confirmation email carries tracking as soon as the parcel is scanned.

Email studioashkini@gmail.com with your order number and a photo, and we will sort it out. Press-ons are worn on the body, so returns are handled case by case rather than by a blanket policy — the current terms are on the shipping and returns page. A fit problem is usually fixable without a return at all: send us your measurements and we can tell you whether the set needs filing down or a different size, and a mis-sized set that has not been worn is a much easier conversation than one that has.