A gel nail has broken or lifted: what to do in the next ten minutes

Before anything else, leave it alone

One nail has gone wrong and the other nine are fine. The strongest instinct now is to touch it, and the second strongest is to lift the loose edge with a thumbnail to see how far it goes. That is the one action that turns a single damaged nail into three. Gel is bonded to the surface of your nail. When you lift a loose edge you are not testing it, you are peeling it, and what comes away is not only gel. Put your hands down and keep the problem to one nail.

The picking rarely happens in one go. It happens across an evening in front of the television, in the car, during a long phone call, with your hands working while your mind is elsewhere. If you know that about yourself, take the temptation away. Cover the nail so your fingers have nothing to find. A plaster over it for the evening is a slightly silly looking solution that works. The set you still have is worth more than the satisfaction of pulling one nail off.

Work out which of the five things has happened

What you do next depends on what has actually happened, and the five things people all call a broken nail are five different problems. The mildest is a chip in the colour only. The surface has taken a knock, a small piece of top coat has come away, and the gel underneath still sits flat all around, with nothing catching under a fingertip. The second is a lifted edge, where the gel has come away from the nail itself, usually at the cuticle end or along a side wall, and you can see a thin gap where air has got underneath.

The third is a crack, a line running across the nail or in from a side, with the gel still attached but split. Cracks move. The fourth is a whole extension that has snapped or come away in one piece, sometimes leaving your own nail short and bare underneath. The fifth is the one that hurts, where the nail has broken below the free edge, past the point where it is still attached to the finger, and the natural nail is torn or sore. The fifth needs no expertise to spot, because it is the one you feel.

The holding measures that are reasonable until you can get seen

There are a few sensible things to do in the meantime, and they are about stopping the damage spreading rather than fixing it. If an edge is snagging, file it smooth. Use the file in one direction, following the shape the nail already has, with light strokes travelling from the side towards the tip. Do not saw back and forth across the break. Sawing heats the nail, works the split wider and frays a clean edge. Take off only the point that catches, and stop as soon as a fingertip runs over it cleanly.

Keep it dry where you can. Water gets under a lifted edge and stays there, and once it is under, the lifting spreads sideways. That is hard advice in a house where the washing up, the cooking and wudu all happen anyway, so take it as a matter of degree. Gloves for the dishes and the laundry, hands dried properly afterwards, no long soak in hot water. If the edge is rough, tape or a plaster stops it snagging on wool, hair and dupatta edges. Filing, drying and covering are holding measures, not a repair.

The things that turn one bad nail into a bad set

The list of things not to do is short, and every item on it is something people reach for in a panic. Do not use household glue, craft glue or anything out of the toolbox. It is not made to go on a nail or to come off one, and getting it off afterwards costs you more of your own nail than the break did. Do not stick a broken piece back on. Even when it sits back neatly, you have sealed a gap, and whatever is inside it stays there under something you cannot see through.

Do not cut it off. Scissors and clippers squeeze the whole nail to make the cut, and on a nail that is already cracked, that pressure runs into the split and carries it further down than you meant. The same goes for pulling. Do not peel the rest of the set off in frustration, because the gel comes away with layers of your own nail attached and you will be living with thin, tender nails long after the function is over. And do not file the whole set down to match the broken one.

If the natural nail underneath is hurt, a doctor comes first

One line here matters more than the rest of this guide. If the natural nail underneath is torn, if there is bleeding, if the nail or the skin around it is sore, swollen, hot or broken open, that is a matter for a doctor first. Not a nail studio, not a home remedy, and not something to sit on until the weekend. Cover it with something clean, keep it dry, and get it looked at by a medical professional. That is exactly what we will say if you send us a photo of it.

That is the whole of our advice on it, and we will not go further, because going further would mean giving medical advice we have no business giving. Once a doctor has seen it and is happy with it, the cosmetic side is a conversation we can have. Until then the nail is not a nail question. Nothing about a chipped set is urgent enough to be worth ignoring a finger that hurts.

What a studio can usually do about each kind of damage

The honest range runs from small to the whole set coming off, and which one you are in depends on which of the five you have. A chip in the colour on an otherwise sound nail is usually the smallest job there is. A lifted edge often means that nail gets taken back and redone rather than patched, because sealing over a lifted area traps whatever is underneath and the same edge tends to lift again. A crack sometimes takes a reinforcement over the top and sometimes does not, depending on where it sits.

An extension that has come off is usually a rebuild of that one nail, matched to the length and shape of the others, and the matching takes more skill than the nail itself. Sometimes one nail cannot be matched convincingly, most often with a chrome, a magnetic gel or a hand painted design, where a single fresh nail reads as obviously newer than the rest. Then more than one gets redone, or the set comes off and starts again. Nobody can tell which applies from a description, so send a photo in chat and you get a straight answer.

What to send so you get a useful answer back

A good photo saves a long back and forth. Stand near a window in daylight, not under a bathroom bulb and not with the flash on, because flash flattens the nail and hides the gap we are looking for. Get close enough that the one nail fills most of the frame and is in focus, then take a second picture of the whole hand so we can see the length, the shape and what the other nails are doing. If something is lifting, a shot from the side shows it better than one taken straight down.

Then tell us the rest in words. When it happened, and what you were doing at the time, because a nail that came off in the kitchen and a nail that caught on a car door are different problems underneath. Whether your own nail is affected or whether it is only the gel. Roughly how old the set is. And if there is a function coming, say the date in that first message rather than three messages later. Those few lines decide whether you get an answer you can act on.

Why it happened, so it happens less often

The same nail tends to go twice, so it is worth knowing why. Most breaks are a length and shape problem rather than a strength problem. A long almond or a sharp point puts the force of a knock onto a narrow tip, and every bit of length past your fingertip works against the join. If your hands cook, knead, wash and carry all day, a shorter length and a softer shape survive that life far better, and they read as considered rather than compromised. Nobody enjoys being told to go shorter, and it is still the change that makes the biggest difference.

The second thing is that most nails do not break from impact. They break from catching. The nail hooks on something and your hand keeps moving, and the force goes sideways into a nail built to take pressure from underneath. Once you know that, the usual places become obvious. Pulling washing out of a machine, reaching into a tight bag, peeling a lid off, jeans pockets. The kitchen and the laundry account for most of what we see, because that is where hands go into small spaces quickly, and hot water and detergent have softened everything first.

Look at which hand it was. For most people it is the hand they use most, and it goes first and goes more often, which is why a set can look perfect on one side and tired on the other. That is normal and not a fault in the work. If you want to go further, there is a separate guide on how long a gel set actually lasts and what changes that, and another on the small habits that keep a set on for longer. Both are worth reading before your next set rather than after this one.

Two days before a function and one nail is gone

This is the version people actually message about, usually late at night. Do the same first three things. Leave it alone, file off anything that snags, and take the photo in the morning when there is daylight. Then message with the date in the first line. Shaadi season runs from October through the winter, and the days before a function are the busiest days in every studio in the city, so the date is not a detail, it decides what is realistic. Send it early rather than politely waiting.

Ask two questions plainly. First, given the photo, what are the options. Second, which of those options fits the time there actually is before your date. Sometimes they are not the same answer, and it is better to know that at the start. If you have a mehndi, a baraat and a walima on separate days, say so, because a set that has to survive one evening and one that has to survive a run of functions are different decisions about length, shape and finish. A neatly filed short nail among nine longer ones reads as nothing in photographs.