Beginners Guide to Accent Nails and Some Quick Ideas

by Adi

Hi everyone!
Today’s post features a cool nail art idea which is very popular in the west – accent nails! These are also called feature nails because essentially – one nail is ‘featured’ or painted/styled differently from the remaining fingernails. The ring fingernail is usually made the accent nail. Accent nails look beautiful especially if you are wearing a ring in the same finger as your accent nail. It draws more attention to the ring and just looks so posh!

Contrasting Colour:

The most common way to style an accent nail is to paint it a different colour altogether. For instance, pale blue nail colour with an orange accent nail, or pink nail polish with a blue accent nail. Black is the most striking accent nail colour. It always looks great and goes with every colour so you can be sure that the colours don’t clash!

Additional Glitter:

Another cute and extremely simple way to highlight your accent nail is to simply pile on a lot of transparent glitter nail polish on it. Let the rest of your nails stay creme and let the glitter take center stage on your accent nail. A good transparent nail polish with tons of glitter is the Maybelline Colorama Glitter Prata. You can use multi coloured and or unevenly-sized glitter too!

Simple Nail Art:

You could also paint simple nail art on just your accent nail – hearts, polka dots, stripes, stars, etc or a combination of these are just some ways in which you can glam up your manicure! This is a great way to incorporate nail art into your manicure if you have small nails and you feel that nail art on all your fingernails looks crowded or overwhelming.

Creme Colours with Neutral Glitters – Silver and Gold:

Yet another idea is to paint your accent nail with a neutral glitter. This is different from the previous tip in the sense that in this case, the nail is a different colour – there it was merely a glitter top coat wherein the original colour peeped through. Glittery neutral accent nails are a great way to style an evening dress.

Bold Nail Polishes with a Nude/Flesh Accent Nail:

I saw this style on Anne Hathaway and I couldn’t believe how gorgeous it looked. With flesh toned nail polishes, the right way to go is to paint your accent nail with a warm nail color – reds, maroons, oranges and pinks all look great. Blues and greens may seem out of place so steer clear of them.

The key point to remember about accent nails is to make them look deliberate – it shouldn’t look like you’ve made a mistake. For instance using a lighter or darker shade (on your accent nail) of the same nail polish that you have applied on your remaining fingernails would look like you forgot to add the required coat or you used too much nail polish on your accent nail, instead of looking fashionable. Or using clear nail polish would look weird. (‘Hey did you forget to paint one of your nails?’)

As with nail art, there is no end to the possible designs for accent nails, so pick your favorite idea (or create your own!) and just have fun with it! Hope you girls liked this post :)

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