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Writer's pictureBailey Renee

How Long Does it Take Nail Polish to Dry?

You paint your nails and are letting them dry. Are you impatient? Do you have better things to do? Then this article is for you! I will be showing you what polishes dry the fastest and the slowest from these eight different brands!






















I tested the brand's claim v.s. data I personally collected from a variety of different brands. These drugstore brands include Sinful Colors, Essie, Revlon, and Sally Hansen. I also tested higher-end brands which include Holo Taco, Fun Lacquer, Live Love Polish, and Color Club.


I set the data I collected in bar graph form to show the data in a more visual way. It's also important to note that I applied one even coat of polish over a fully dried base coat and recorded my results from there. Normally, you would apply a second coat of polish then a top coat, but I wanted to test the polish all on its own. I also waited until the polish was dry to the touch while also not pressing too hard. It's also important to note that nail polish is made in batches and its likely that polish from my data had a longer drying time because it was from a bad batch.


According to my research, the drugstore polishes claimed a shorter drying time and all besides Revlon made it within the time frames they claimed.


(However, from this selection my favorite is Revlon.)


Revlon also claimed the shortest drying time of two minutes. It ended up drying in four minutes.


Essie claimed the longest drying time of fifteen minutes. Essie ended up drying in two minutes.


This makes Essie the fastest drying polish from both sets of data!


I was fairly shocked by Essie considering I haven't had the greatest experience with their polishes in the past.


Moving on to Sally Hansen...


Sally Hansen claimed to dry in five minutes and ended up drying in three minutes.


This is the same for Sinful Colors.


I was also fairly surprised by Sally Hansen. I tried their polish millions of times and it always seemed to be a bad batch. Somehow, the one I tried today called Tidal Wave was wonderful and actually opaque in two coats.


Sinful Colors had the same data as Sally Hansen, but I wasn't as surprised.


Finally, here is the graph for this set of data.

As expected, the higher-end nail polishes claimed a shorter drying time.


However, that wasn't the case.


These polishes compared to the drugstore ones surprisingly took longer to dry.


The polish I found to take the longest to dry was Color Club.


Color Club took the longest to dry due to its thick opaque consistency.


Color Club claimed it took ten minutes but it actually took six minutes.


Then we have Fun Lacquer.


Fun Lacquer claimed to dry in three minutes but it actually took five.


Holo Taco claimed to dry in ten minutes but ended up drying in four.


Live Love Polish took the fastest drying time in this data set.


Live Love Polish claimed to dry in five minutes but it only took three.


Finally, here is the graph for this data set.


That is it for "How Long Does it Take Nail Polish to Dry?"! Fun fact--this was actually for a data collection math project! I decided to turn it into a blog post too! I really hope you enjoyed and took note of the drying times. The brand's claim was fairly hard to find so I also went for other people's claims on the internet if I couldn't find one for a particular brand. If you enjoyed this post be sure to give it a ❤️ and follow my socials including my Instagram (@gloomy.nails) and my Pinterest (@gloomynails) with no dot that time.


Thanks for reading! Have a colorful day! 🌈

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