A set is decided by your nail, not by a photograph

A set that looks expensive is not one with more art on it. It is one where the cuticle line is genuinely clean, the surface is completely even, and the finished nail still looks thin rather than built up. Those three things are decided before any colour goes on, and they are what separates a set from a set that only photographs well.

So the order of work is fixed here. The nail plate and the cuticle area are read first, the shape and the length are decided against the hands they are going on, the prep is done properly, and only then does anything get applied. A nail extension is chosen by looking at the condition of the nail, never by looking at a picture — and a nail that is not ready today is not worked on today.

Prep and sanitisation are the two things never shortened, however late the appointment is running. Tools are sanitised for every single guest and files are single-use, and that does not change for anybody. It is the rule the whole pillar rests on: nail work is where cutting corners shows fastest.

The first thing a trainee learns here is prep, not design. Design comes afterwards, because the best design in the salon will lift within five days if the prep underneath it was wrong — and the guest will blame the set rather than the five minutes that were skipped.

Extensions are widely believed to ruin natural nails. They do not. What ruins natural nails is over-filing them in the name of strength, and taking a set off at home instead of having it soaked off — and over-filed nails are the hardest thing on this pillar to put right, because they do not recover in the sitting they were thinned in. They take months.

The lesson that took the longest to learn is that the length and shape a guest asks for is not always the length and shape her hands and her week can carry. Saying so does not upset anyone, provided the reason comes with it. What is never said here is that a set will not break — that depends on how you use your hands, and no product changes it.

The first thing looked at is the state of the natural nail plate — whether it is thin or strong, whether there are ridges or white spots across it, and whether the cuticle area is clean or swollen. That reading, not the design you arrived with, decides what can be built and how long it will stay on.

A healthy nail is recognisable: a pale pink nail bed, a smooth surface with no ridges, a strong free edge, and a cuticle that is clean and not inflamed. A weak nail announces itself just as clearly — it bends, it peels away in layers from the edges, it gives under light pressure, and it carries white spots or deep ridges. Weak does not mean no, but it changes the length, the shape and the system used.

Some findings are not a grading at all. A nail lifting away from its bed, a colour turning yellow or green, or pus around the nail are signs of infection, and no set goes on over any of them. Nor does one go over a fungal infection, a lifting previous set, a cut nail, a wound, psoriasis patches on the nail, or a nail already under someone else's treatment. Pain, a nail coming fully away from the bed, a change of colour, or infection that keeps returning belong with a doctor rather than with a nail technician, and that is said plainly rather than worked around.

The easiest nail to work on is a normal-to-strong plate with a little natural length and a straight nail bed — everything sits cleanly on it. The hardest is a very thin, bitten nail with a short nail bed and an overgrown cuticle, where both grip and shape are difficult to achieve; that difficulty is stated at the reading rather than discovered a week later. Retention is read at the same time: a very oily nail plate, hands in water for much of the day, or a cuticle that has not been prepped properly all predict a set that lifts early, while a cleanly prepped dry plate, a healthy cuticle and a guest who looks after her hands comfortably gets three to four weeks.