Getting a manicure is so calming—whether you’re doing it yourself or getting one at the salon, it’s a fab opportunity to zone out while beautifying your nails with whatever hue you like. But all the fun stops once you’ve gotta sit for-e-ver to wait for the nail polish to dry.
It’s literally sitting and watching paint dry, but it’s also a necessary evil. If you don’t wait long enough, you’re undoubtedly faced with wrecked fingertips that you just spent all that time getting for yourself. So in the pious pursuit of finding a hack that makes your nail polish dry fast, I’ve finally found the one that works—and all it takes is some ice cubes.
“Typically, polish can take up to an hour to fully, fully dry, but you’re in the clear of wet polish after about ten minutes,” says Sarah Gibson Tuttle, CEO and founder of Olive and June, a nail salon and nail polish brand based in California. But the ice cube-in-water hack chops that drying time down exponentially—all you have to do is dunk your wet manicure into the ice water for it to work.
“I feel like it works—we like to think that it shocks the polish into setting,” says Gibson Tuttle, who does the trick herself. “I do it because it works for me—but my biggest piece of advice is to do this step when the polish is closer to dry than wet. The closer to wet it is, the less helpful this hack can be.” According to her, you only have to dunk your nails for a few quick seconds in order to reap the drying benefits.
Sure, you can always turn to quick-dry drops, nail drying fans, or air drying options, but the ice dunk is expert-approved and easy as cake to do—so that you can go on with your day, sans-ruined manicure.
If your nails are brittle, here’s what the experts say you can do to heal them. And these are all of the cuticle oil benefits that you never know about, but should.
Sign Up for Our Daily Newsletter
Get all the latest in wellness, trends, food, fitness, beauty, and more delivered right to your inbox.
Got it, you've been added to our email list.
