Last updated on October 26th, 2021 at 10:20 pm

I love painting my nails, but taking it off can be a pain. Now that I’ve my DIY nail routine down, and found the best way to take off nail polish, it’s a breeze to change up my nails! 

All you’ll need are nail polish remover and a couple cotton balls. And with this technique, you’ll need far less cotton balls than usual! I grab three cotton balls, and that’s it! 

Take one of your cotton balls and unroll it so it’s just one long strip. Then just tear off little pieces of cotton so you have 10 total. 

Next, take off the cap of your nail polish remover, and pour some into the cap. 

Pick which hand you want to start with and dip a piece of cotton in the nail polish remover and put on your nail. Make sure all of your nail is covered! Repeat for each nail. 

Let the cotton sit on your nails for a minute or two. If you have a lot of layers of polish on, you could probably wait a little bit longer. 

Using one of your intact cotton balls, give each of your nails a little scrub and viola! All your nail polish will magically disappear!

This is by far the best way to take off nail polish!

Wearing Gel Polish?

The process for gel polish is similar, but has a couple more steps. 

To remove gel polish, make sure you have 100% acetone nail polish remover. Anything that doesn’t contain mostly acetone won’t work nearly as well. Along with the nail polish remover, you’ll need at least 5 cotton balls this time, plus some tin foil. If you have a cuticle pusher that’ll come in handy too. 

Prep before you start by cutting each of the cotton balls in half, and cutting out 10 strips of tinfoil. 

With gel polish, it’s important to file down the top layer so the remover can penetrate the gel polish. Using a nail file that isn’t too harsh, buff the top of each nail until it looks relatively dull. 

Unless you have someone at home willing to help, you’ll end up doing one hand at a time. I’ve somehow managed to do both at the same time, but scrolling insta is tough when all your fingers are covered!

Fair warning, acetone is really drying. So put some lotion or Vaseline on your cuticles and fingers to protect them from drying out too much! 

Douse one half of the cotton ball in nail polish remover and put it on top of your nail. Next, take your strip of tin foil and wrap it around your nail and make sure it’s secure around your nail. 

Once you get all your nails covered, it’s time to wait. For gel, you’re going to be waiting anywhere from 15-20 minutes, and then some. 

After 15 minutes or so, I’ll start to check on my nails by taking off the cotton ball/tin foil wrap. I take it off in one piece so if my nails aren’t quite ready yet I can put it right back on. 

If some polish has started to come off my nails, I’ll use the cuticle pusher to gently scrape it into the garbage. 

Repeat on both hands until all your polish has come off! 

New Product for Gel Nail Polish Remover!

At my last nail appointment, my manicurist introduced me to a brand new product to remove gel nail polish. And, from the way it worked, I may be able to go back to using my aluminum foil just for food! It worked great at the salon so I wanted to see if I could find the product online and see if I could do it all myself.

The product is called Aliver Gel Nail Polish Remover and you can find it easily on amazon.com.

The single bottle is currently (as of 9/2/21) $8.99 and the two-pack is $12.99. Since this was my first time using it, I don’t know how long each bottle will last. So I can’t say if it’s expensive or not.

I had an idea how to use it from watching my manicurist, but I did follow the company’s instructions, shown below.

I followed each step and it worked almost exactly as they predicted. The biggest thing I noticed was that the gel seemed to take longer than three minutes to work. I ended up putting on a second coat, (mostly because of my impatience). I would say that it was more like 10 minutes before I tried to remove it, but I was also doing other things while waiting.

The nail polish didn’t “burst” open for me at home, but it did at the salon. However, I was still able to scrape off the polish fairly easily. I did purchase steel nail implements as they suggested. They were also inexpensive on amazon.com (only $4.29 as of 9/2/21) and I really think it helped.

Just as with the the “foil” method, I still had a little bit of polish left on my nails as you’ll see below. I did add a little bit of gel to just those couple of tough spots and waited a little bit longer. I was able to scrape off almost everything and the rest I was able to buff off with a nail buffer.

One of things I like to do when I remove nail polish is apply C.N.D. Rescue RXx Keratin treatment.

Even though my nails were not as dry as when using acetone, I do like how this works and how my nails look after. I will use this for a couple of days usually before I put polish back on. I should add that I used this all the time during the pandemic since I didn’t paint my nails that often. This really made them healthy and strong in general.

Pros & Cons of Using Aliver vs. Acetone/Aluminum Foil

Pros:

• Easy to apply
• Less mess, easier clean up
• No acetone, less drying of nails
• Did not take any longer than using acetone
• Was easier to do other things while waiting; my nails weren’t wrapped in foil

Cons

• May be more expensive

Hot tip (literally!)

Heat will also help to hurry the process along. Use a heating pad, or a microwaveable heating pad to speed things up! 

This is the best way I’ve found to take off nail polish. Do you do something different that works even better? Share with me below!