FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

As the name suggests, nail extensions allow you to extend your natural nails in length or thickness. You can get nail extensions if you want to have your nails a bit longer, or to keep your natural nails from breaking.

If you currently have no nail extensions on, you would need to an appointment for a full set of nail extensions, which will be done with acrylic powder at our salon.

And you have had your nail extensions on in the last 3 to 4 weeks, you can get an infill appointment, where you will have the grown part of your natural nails filled with acrylic powder without having to get a new set of acrylics.

We highly recommend getting your extensions done every 2 weeks, and no longer than 3 weeks.

This also depends on the nature and needs of an individual’s nails. Some people’s nails grow faster than others, hence they would require an appointment sooner.

More treatment recommendations and expectations can be found here: Treatment Recommendations

Shellac is a patented brand of gel polish. It is a bit like calling a vacuum cleaner a Hoover, it is the name of CND brand of gel polish.

In general, we often call gel polish ‘Shellac’. And gel polish should not be confused with gel nails (also known as hard gel or builder gel). Shellac nail polish is thinner than gel nails, so generally shellac nails tend to start to ‘break down’ around two weeks.

Shellac nails are quicker to apply, stay shiny the whole time, and are harder to chip compared to normal nail varnish. Additionally, shellac nails are much easier to remove and minimise the damages to your natural nails.

We offer acrylic and gel polish instead of builder gel nails.

Builder gel is simply not safer, or healthier for your natural nails.

According to Doug Schoon, a scientific consultant to the beauty industry and president of Schoon Scientific: “Gel manufacturers are out there implying that gels are healthier for natural nails. There is no reason to believe that at all”.

Builder gel and acrylic powder are all Methacrylate-based products. Gels, acrylics, and dips all harden through chemical reactions that bond short chains of molecules into long ones, called polymers, solidifying the nail in the process. In both gels and acrylics, the polymers hold hands with each other in ladder-like “cross-links”.

Most damage attributed to nail extensions is actually caused by over-filing the nails, which is most likely to happen when a technician forgoes a hand buffer in favour of a drill fitted with a file tip to remove the top layer of the natural nails. In simple words, the acrylic powder itself barely damages your nails, over-filing does.

At Flamingo Beauty, we tend to keep the filing to the minimum as much as we can. For instance, when removing nail extensions, we soak off your nails in nail remover for longer so we won’t need to use the drill as much.