How To Remove Dip Powder Nails

Applying dip powder nails is an effortless exercise but how do you remove dip powder nails?

Although there’s no UV light involved as with gel nails, there is a process to safely remove the dip powder nails.

Clients should avoid trying to peel the layer off; it could damage their nails. Rather make an appointment with your nail technician to remove the dip powder nails without harming your nails.

Here is how the nail technician will remove the dip powder nails. 

What You Need to Remove the Dip Powder Nails

To remove the dip powder nails a nail technician will require the following items:

• A nail file for buffing and filing down
• Acetone for soaking-off the dip powder nails
• Cotton balls soaked in acetone to remove remaining dip powder and to use with the wrapping foil technique
• A small bowl for the acetone or small squares of foil
  
• Optional is a steaming hot towel to decrease the soaking-off time
  

Start With The Topcoat

Before the nail technician will soak the nails, she needs to buff or file down the topcoat on the nails. When the topcoat is broken down, it’s easier to soak off the nails.

Take an emery board and use gentle back-and-forth strokes in a side-to-side movement across the nail bed. Continue buffing and filing until the nail is covered in white dust indicating that the topcoat is removed. 

Soak-Off in Acetone

A nail technician has two options in soaking off the dip powder nails. She can use a bowl filled with acetone or wrap the nails with acetone-soaked cotton pads and foil. 

• Use a bowl with acetone
  
  Now that the protective barrier is broken, it will be faster to soak off the nails. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to soak off the nails in a bowl of acetone.
  
  Sometimes clients are in a hurry. When pushed for time, increase the soak-off speed by placing a hot towel over the bowl with acetone.
  
  While you wait, use the opportunity to discuss the type of nail art or color your client wants you to apply on her nails.
  
  
• Use acetone-soaked cotton balls and foil
  
  With a bowl of acetone, the fingers are also soaked in the acetone, which dries out the skin.
  
  Using the wrapping method, the nail technician limits how much skin is exposed to the acetone.
  
  Soak the cotton ball in acetone and place it one cotton ball on top of a dip powder nail. Then take a small square of foil and wrap it around the finger.
  
  The foil holds the cotton ball in place. The acetone penetrates the dip powder and removes it from the nail. Repeat the process with all ten fingers.
  
  The soaking-off period is about the same as with the bowl of acetone. The skin on your client’s fingers, however, weren’t exposed to the acetone like with a bowl of acetone.  
  

Removing Remaining Dip Powder

Although the soak-off in acetone removes most of the dip powder, there is always some powder that remains.

Soak a cotton ball or pad in acetone and gently wipe off the remaining powder on your client’s nails.

You won’t accidentally damage your client’s nails because you don’t have to scrape the remaining dip powder off her nails.

After the nail technician has removed the dip powder nails, she can continue with the usual manicure or pedicure.

The dip powder technique is popular not only among clients because of its vibrant colors, but nail technicians like it too.

From a nail technician’s perspective, you can give your client a beautiful set of nails quickly.

Although removing the dip powder nails is a process, it is by far one of the safest products to remove from your nails. It is gentler on the nails.