After a mani or pedi, they instruct me to sit with my hands or feet (or both) underneath these bluelight boxes, which I was told “harden” the nail polish by UV light. I will grant that the polish sets beautifully, and far more quickly than my at home polish, and it doesn’t chip as quickly.
But yesterday, as I was painting my toes in the car (yes, I was the passenger), I started thinking…could I stick my toes out the window and get a similar result? Which led to the question in the title: how much UV exposure am I getting at the salon in the 10-15 minutes I’m under those lights? More than the equivalent in the sun? Less? Is it actually UV at all? Am I risking melanoma of the toes in my quest for pretty feet?
Maybe, but probably not. It depends on the exact nature of the epoxy being used. In simple terms the chemicals in the polish start out as individual units, like the links in a chain. the energy in the UV light allows them those links to join up into long chains. For some epoxies the intensity of the UV light doesn’t matter, the units will ink up in just one fashion, less light just makes it happen slower. In most however, if the light is too low the reaction proceeds funny and you start getting short chains, chains with side branches, chains that join to their own ends to form rings and all sorts of other oddities. If that happens the epoxy won’t be as hard, and partsof it may not set at all and it can also lead to a wrinkled surface appearance.
More and less and neither. Is that clear? UV light is a part of the spectrum, just like visible light, and just like you can have blue and red visible light you can have near and far UV light. Sunlight contains a bit of both, the lamps used in the salon are almost all near UV, but usually at an intensity much stronger than in sunlight.
Yes, but very lo energy UV that is very close to visible light. That’s why you can see it. The high energy UV lamps e invisible even when turned on.
Yes, but the risk is incredibly tiny. The near UV light they use in those things carries some risk of causing cancer, but it’s very, very low. I don’t know exactly what it would be, but you’d be looking at something like one person in a million developing cancer from them over the course of a lifetime. To put that in perspective, spending just half an hour walking along a busy road during heavy traffic has about a one in a million chance of causing cancer.
Are the home UV lights (examples from Amazon) similar to those in salons? I have a few things to order this weekend, and I’d love to surprise her with one if it’s worth it. If it makes a difference, nails are one of her few girlie-girl indulgences–when she decides to “do” her nails it’s a several hour affair. Besides polish and topcoats, there’s also wraps, which I’ve been told are not “fake” nails.
ETA: Didn’t someone run an ask the manicurist thread or something a while back? Or ask about somethign for his wife that ran a nail blog? Anyone remember?
A bit of an oversimplification. If it were pure near UV, you’d basically have to shine it directly into your eyes to be able to see it at all. But it’s a lot easier to make a light source that emits a range of frequencies than a single exact frequency, so you end up producing some visible light, too. The light you’re seeing is actually visible light, not the near UV itself.
It looks like the same thing, but of course I don’t know if the specs differ. If she’s a nail girl, she’ll probably love having one of these at home. Does she have a Dremel? Not a special namby pamby rotary nail file in pink, but a real Dremel with a cord? It may cut her hours down dramatically.
Ack, they discontinued the Dremel manicure kit a few years back. She has one of those wimpy non-Dremel namby-pamby things you’re talking about and jealously eyes my regular Dremel (hey, it’s got variable speed, right?). They do have a “pet” manicure tool now, but somehow I don’t think that would go over very well.
Every salon I’ve been in uses your Dremel (well, probably not yours, per se, but the “tool” kind, not the “manicure” kind) or the Sears version, with sandpaper heads. They’re awesome.
My nail tech (owns the salon) uses one of the home UV lights for her clients but her employees use the big salon one for their clients. I’ve only been going to Sue for 2 or 3 months now but my mom has been seeing her for over 2 years and she said she’s always used the home use ones.
I usually just have a clear coat but my mom gets a french manicure with various embellishments. Regardless of how the nails are decorated, Sue still uses the home light.
I have never had a problem with my polish after using that light. I like it because it doesn’t feel so intense. I had to use the big one after my pedicure and my feet felt like they were on fire.
This is what a former foster mother told me about fake nails (she got really offended when people called her nails fake): Fake nails are tips with acrylic or gel or full cover nails, which give the nail its length. Wraps are NOT fake nails. They are nail reinforcements.
Acrylic and gel can also be used to reinforce - which is how my mother an I use them. The whole length of our nails is real but they have the acrylic cover for durability.
