How to stop gel polish from chipping at the tips.

You have been told that gel polish lasts two weeks. You have also watched it chip at the tips on day four. The advice you find online blames your base coat, your lamp, your top coat, your cuticle oil — everything except the actual problem, which is that no one capped your free edge. Gel polish chips at the tips because the seal breaks where your nail meets air, and most people apply gel the way they apply regular polish: a stripe down the centre, two strokes at the sides, done. That leaves the tip edge completely <em>uncoated.</em>

This is about those thirty seconds. Four steps that seal the edge before you cure, so the gel hardens as one continuous film instead of a coat with an open seam. If you already know how to apply gel polish, this is the correction. If you are new to gel, this is the part the bottle instructions leave out.

1. Prep the edge with alcohol, not just the surface.. Soak a lint-free wipe with isopropyl alcohol — at least seventy per cent. Wipe the entire nail surface as usual, then fold the wipe and run the edge along the underside of your free edge, where the tip meets air. You are removing oils that migrated to the edge when you shaped your nails or touched anything after filing. If you skip this, the gel will not adhere at the rim, and that is where the first chip starts. The surface can be clean while the edge is not.
2. Cap the free edge before you paint the surface.. Load your brush with base coat, wipe one side almost clean, then hold the brush horizontally and paint the very edge of your nail tip — the rim where the free edge ends. You are drawing a thin line of gel along that edge, sealing it before you coat the top surface. Do this for base, colour, and top coat, every single layer. The gel must wrap around the edge to lock in. If you paint the surface first and try to cap afterwards, you will drag wet gel and create a thick, uneven bead that will not cure properly.
3. Paint the surface in thin, even layers.. After capping the edge, apply gel to the nail surface as usual — one stroke down the centre, one on each side. Keep each layer thin. Thick gel does not cure all the way through under a standard LED lamp, and the uncured layer underneath remains soft and prone to peeling at the edges. If you are used to regular polish, this is the opposite instinct: regular polish looks better thick and opaque in two coats, but gel needs three or four <em>thin</em> coats to cure hard. Each layer should look slightly streaky before it cures — that is correct.
4. Cure with your fingertips angled down.. Place your hand in the lamp with your fingertips tilted slightly downward, not flat. This ensures the underside of your free edge — the part you just capped — gets full UV or LED exposure. If your nails are flat or angled up, the edge stays in shadow and the gel there remains tacky or undercured, which means it will peel off in the shower or when you type. Cure each coat for the full time your lamp specifies, usually thirty to sixty seconds. Do not pull your hand out early to check — partial curing leaves a soft layer that chips.

The seal breaks where your nail meets air — cap the edge before you cure.