In the shiny world of nail lacquers, is it really worth paying more for nontoxic and designer brands?
In the world of nail polish, there’s a wide range of colors, formulas, finishes and prices. But what’s the difference between the cheap nail polish at the drugstore and a $50 designer bottle from a luxury department store, plus the mainstream salon and independent nail polish brands in between?
It turns out the main differences that affect price are marketing and packaging, according to experts.
“The reality is that nail polish technology is rather mature and hasn’t changed that much in a lot of years,” Perry Romanowski, cosmetic chemist and co-host of The Beauty Brains podcast, told HuffPost. “The biggest difference between expensive products and less expensive products is mostly packaging. The bottles for expensive products look nicer and the brushes also likely work better, but as far as colors and technology, there isn’t much difference.”
Economies of scale are also at play here. Larger nail polish companies can purchase in bulk and produce their polish more quickly and in higher quantities than an independent nail polish brand doing everything by hand. A cheaper nail polish isn’t necessarily of lower quality than a more expensive nail polish, and nail polish made by a smaller brand isn’t automatically inferior.
In fact, if you’re in the market for nail polishes with special finishes, smaller indie brands are often the way to go.
“Those independent formulas are made in much smaller batches, so they’re able to do more experimental things like use more expensive pigments, iridescent flakes and shimmers,” Kelli Marissa, a beauty YouTuber with 238,000 subscribers and more than 2,000 nail polishes in her ever-growing collection, told HuffPost.
Source: huffpost.com
