I Could Never Do My Own Gel Manicure at Home—Until This Kit (2024)

I am a DIY nail girlie. I have been for as long as I can remember, with a brief, involuntary break when I was about six (I spilled red nail polish all over the white bathroom tiles and was temporarily banned from doing my own manicures). And though I’ve been whipping up my own nail art for about three decades, I’ve never quite gotten a handle on at-home gels. The polish is gloopy, the lights are clunky, and my unprofessional application techniques mean they don’t last any longer than a regular manicure would. But in this month’s One to Watch honoree from Olive & June, I may have found a product that changes my tune.

Founder Sarah Gibson Tuttle’s mission for Olive & June has always been to teach the general population how to do their own nails at home. The brand’s regular nail polishes are some of my favorites, its cuticle oil and polish remover pot have won multiple Best of Beauty Awards, and this year its long-lasting press-on nails won a Breakthrough Award. All that’s to say: The brand is quite good at this, and I was eager to try their latest attempt to bring the salon in my humble home: the Olive & June Gel Mani System.

Meet the experts:

• Kelly Dobos is a cosmetic chemist and adjunct professor of cosmetic science at the University of Cincinnati.
• Julie Kandalec is a nail artist based in New York City.
• Sarah Gibson Tuttle is the founder and CEO of Olive & June.
• Anne Reigle is the vice president of product development at Olive & June.
• Sarah Leech Aucutt is the COO/CRO of Olive & June.

In this story:

• Overview
• About the system
• How I tested it
• More Allure reviews
• Pricing and value
• Where to buy it

Overview

On a call that previewed this launch, Gibson Tuttle tells me that gel nails have always been on Olive & June’s roadmap, but she “wanted to make sure everyone knew how to paint their nails first.” With this kit, the brand aimed to create what Gibson Tuttle calls “drama-free gel:” long-lasting, less likely to cause allergic reaction, easy to remove, and accessibly priced.

On October 24, after three years of development, Olive & June launched its entire gel shebang: 28 gel polishes in the brand’s best-selling shades, an all-in-one system that includes everything you need to do your own gel mani at home, and a soak-off kit for removal.

About the system

Anne Reigle, the vice president of product development at Olive & June, tells me that developing a system that works together was no easy task. “You essentially have four formulas: the peel off base, the gel base, the color, and the topcoat, and then you also have the lamp,” she says. “We had to make sure that all of those things were compatible with each other, and every time we tweaked something, we had to retest it and then potentially tweak other parts of [the system].” Here, a breakdown of how those components all work in the final product.

The Gel Nail Polish

As mentioned, Olive & June is launching this new category with 28 of the brand’s already-popular shades. This means 21 opaque polishes in a very autumnal palette, three sheer shades, and four special-effects shades—all of which, the brand is very excited to say, are long-lasting (for up to 21 days) and HEMA-free.

HEMA (hydroxyethyl methacrylate) is common in gel polish because it works extremely well as an adhesive, but it can indeed be irritating to some. “Because HEMA is a small molecule, it can more easily penetrate the skin and cause an allergic reaction,” says Kelly Dobos, a cosmetic chemist. Instead, these formulas contain bis-HEMA, which Dobos confirms is a larger polymer “and less likely to be problematic.” However, Dobos notes that the formulas still contain other small methacrylate molecules that could cause allergic reactions, so it’s important to avoid getting the polish on the skin.

Reigle acknowledges that they couldn’t get rid of every single known allergen and still have a formula that works. “Polish is a paint,” she says. “We just try to make it as safe as possible.” Sarah Leech Aucutt, the COO/CRO of Olive & June, says the brand did testing on “hundreds of people” before the launch and none of them had allergic reactions. (Neither did I, but I’ve also never had an allergic reaction to nail polish, gel or otherwise.)

The Gel Mani System

All those pretty polishes are nothing without the at-home manicure kit, which, for $85, comes with everything you need: the pale pink LED gel lamp specifically programmed to cure the O&J polishes, a variety of base coats and topcoat, one gel polish color of your choice (for $115, you get to pick six), several tools and products for cuticle care, the brand’s Poppy tool to help you paint with your non-dominant hand, an acetone version of the highly popular polish pot, and a little brush to help with cleanup (remember, you don’t want to be curing gel to your skin).

The Peel-Off Base Coat

The Peel-Off Base Coat does exactly what it sounds like: creates a base for your manicure that can be peeled off, rather than needing any sort of liquid remover. Dobos, New York City-based manicurist Julie Kandalec, and I all found it to be the most intriguing part of this entire launch. As Kandalec put it, “people are going to [peel off their gels] anyway, so we might as well give them a product that’s going to prevent damage.” (Kandalec partnered with Olive & June for the launch.) It also means you don’t have to soak in the notoriously drying acetone, which is always a plus, Dobos points out.

Since you don’t cure the peel-off base coat, it can be used under regular polish as well—which is how I plan to use it in the future. I found that the wear time was a bit short for my taste (more on that below) when I layered the peel-off under the gel, but imagine it will come in handy for special events when I coat my nails in loads of glitter. If you are going to use it under the gel, Kandalec advises only applying it to the center of your nail, leaving about two millimeters around the perimeter of the nail bare so the polish has something to adhere to at the edges.

The Salon-Speed Soak-Off Kit

If you’ve dabbled in the world of Olive & June’s press-ons, the removal kit might look familiar. The brand is relaunching an upgraded version of the kit that can be used for the press-ons and the gel: It contains a 2oz. bottle of acetone, a nail file, cuticle pusher, silicone caps, sponges, and foil wraps that, in my experience, got rid of my gels in about 15 minutes.

How I tested it

I made two attempts at using the kit myself before I went to Kandalec for a professional tutorial. While those initial manicures honestly went fairly smoothly, I’m also now well versed in the “don’ts” that can prevent you from getting the most out of the new system.

“One of the most important things is making sure that there's no cuticle on the nail plate,” Kandalec says. The kit comes with a nice cuticle remover that makes it easy to push your cuticles down and then wipe them away with a buffer. Kandalec isn’t opposed to trimming any loose hangnails or excess cuticle either.

After that, you’ll need to get buffing before the base coat. “When your nail is too shiny or too tight…it’s not porous at all, so it just doesn’t hold any [product] at all,” Kandalec explains.

Next comes applying the polishes, which will definitely take some getting used to if you’ve previously only used regular polish for your at-home manicures. Gel polish is thicker, but it’s also crucial that you apply it in thin coats to prevent early peeling. If you’re using the regular gel base coat, “you really have to just use a little bit on the brush, almost like dry brushing,” Kandalec says. Even after wiping the brush off on the bottle, she’ll start by putting a drop of polish on each nail and spreading it around rather than adding more.

Kandalec says the first coat of color polish should be as sheer as a jelly polish and that three thin coats are better than two thicker ones. You cure after each layer of polish on each hand—one minute for the base and topcoats, two minutes for the color coats.

The color polishes, while still thicker than standard nail polish, are a bit thinner than the O&J base and topcoats, which I found makes it easier to apply. The polish on my thumb was pooling to the side of the nail that was pointed down when I tried to stick my whole hand in into the lamp, but Kandalec had a solution for that: Paint your four fingers and flash cure them for 10 seconds to hold the polish in place, then do the same 10-second flash with your thumb facing up before you cure all five nails for the full two minutes.

Even in my less-than-perfect first attempts, I found the kit to be easy to use and loved the results. The polish is very shiny and self-levels, so if I don’t paint it on completely evenly, it all works out once the curing happens—basically, it reduces the chances that I end up with the telltale “bubble” look of an amateur gel manicure.

In terms of weartime, I’m not at a point where I can confidently say this will ever last the full three weeks for me. The first time I tried the kit, I used the peel-off base coat (incorrectly—I layered the regular base on top, which you are apparently not supposed to do) and started losing polish the very next day. The second time I used the regular base which led to better results, but still saw some peeling after five days, likely due to layers of polish that were way too thick. I’m writing this about a week after I got a manicure from Kandalec (my third with the system) and have only one tiny chip on the corner of my right thumb.

The removal system, however, definitely lives up to all its claims. I used it after the second time I did my nails with the gel kit; most of the polish melted off on its own, and any straggling bits of pigment were easily scraped off with the included cuticle pusher. I noticed very minor damage—little dings and some splitting at the tips, some of which was already there before I applied the gel—on a couple of nails, but overall my hands looked good enough to go into the office with totally bare nails the following day. Plus, as associate beauty director Sarah Kinonen found, it works with non-Olive & June gels too.

More Allure reviews

Senior editor Jesa Marie Calaor also found the system easy to use. “It produces a glossy manicure that feels as strong as the one I’d get at a salon,” she says. While I found the color gel polish to be thicker than the regular polish I’m used to, Calaor felt it was runnier than she expected it would be. “It was a learning curve trying to keep it from getting on the edges of my nails,” she says. “But once I was used to working with it, sweeping it on neatly was easy.”

Most of all, she’s impressed by the price point. “It’s definitely going to save me money,” Calaor says. “I usually spend between $85 to $205 on gel manicures in NYC whenever I get the itch to get one (which is at least once a month).”

“I’ve tried half a dozen at-home gel kits over the years and O&J’s new one is certainly the most beginner friendly,” says social director Kassidy Silva, who says she felt like she got all the tools she needed to effectively do her own nails at home. Like Calaor, she feels the polish is thinner than other gels she’s tried, making it easier to build up slowly.

Silva is also very on board with the peel-off base, which she says gave her a manicure that lasted a full week. “It’s a game changer,” she says. “I’ve flipped my polish three times with the peel off base and had very minimal damage that came off with a quick buff.”

Pricing and value

What really makes this a One to Watch is that, honestly, there is no at-home gel system currently on the market that makes for a great one-to-one comparison with the Olive & June version. Most of them—like the kits from Sally Hansen ($60), Le Mini Macaron ($38), and Zoya ($105)—include fewer polishes and/or tools than the O&J. Though you can easily buy acetone, cotton balls, and clips on their own without spending too much, there also aren’t really full removal kits for sale like the one Olive & June is launching.

At $10 a bottle, the individual Olive & June gel polishes are slightly cheaper than average (Sally Hansen and Le Mini Macaron are both $13) but definitely provide salon-level coverage. Plus, I really love the current color selection, which the brand plans to expand in the future.

Where to buy it

Everything in this story launches on oliveandjune.com on October 24. Starting December 29, 24 polish shades, the Gel Polish Starter Kit, Remover Kit, and Essentials Kit will be available at Target.

Explore more One to Watch products:

Pattern's New At-Home Hair Steamer Makes My Washdays So Much Shorter

I’m Already on My Second Jar of This $135 Estée Lauder Cream

Nudestix’s Cloudlike Blushes Are Just as Fun to Stack as They Are to Wear

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