Maybelline color show nail polish review

Every week, it seems that a new type of nail polish product is being created, each one claiming to be bigger and better than the last ‘new thing’. The latest company doing this is Maybelline, with their new color show nail polish. The product claims to be a new gel based formula, with colour popping pigments that gives you bold, crisp, chip resistant colour.

The reason that I first tried these nail polishes is because I absolutely loved the MNY my varnish nail polishes that Maybelline used to do, and I was disappointed when I couldn’t find it anymore. But with all its bold claims, I thought I would give their new product a try.

A selection of the different colours, taken from the Maybelline website

But do all these claims really hold any truth? Well I have to be honest, these nail polishes are both brilliant, but bad at the same time. I own six different colours, and the darker colours, Urban Turquoise and Power Red, are some of the best nail polishes I have ever used. They go on amazingly well, giving really bold intense colour even with just one coat, but with two your nails stand out so much.

Watery Waste, a silver colour, doesn’t give quite as much of a bold colour as the darker ones in just one coat, but that’s obviously a given. And then we come to the lighter colours, Cool Blue, Pink Boom and Winter Baby. I cannot believe how different these colours can be from the darker ones. When I tired to apply this to my nails without any base coat, the polish just seemed to slip from my nails and fall and sit in the sides of my nail, which is not a good look. However with a base coat applied the colour does seem to redeem itself, and be almost as good as the darker colours.

However, Winter Baby, in my opinion, is a compete waste of money. I just can’t seem to get on with this nail varnish. To get any kind of colour from it you have two options, put on a thicker layer and wait ages for it to try and dry, or put on thinner coats and have to put on at least three for it to make any kind of impact, and doing this takes a long time.

Because I work as a cleaner my hands and nails take more of a beating day to day than other people’s hands would, so I found that the claims it was chip resistant weren’t strictly true, but it does last a lot longer than most polishes I have used.

So all in all, this nail polish offers mixed results, with the darker colours being amazing bold and easy to apply, and lighter colours being more subdued and a little trickier to apply. But for only £2.99, which is amazingly cheap compared to some other companies out there, it is a good nail polish.  

By Lucy Bunce