To fully understand more about what builder gel is exactly, I asked celebrity nail artist Julie Kandalec to break it down for us. “Builder gel is a gel product that has a thicker viscosity that is able to be used to lengthen the nails as well as build strength at the apex period,” she says. “I recommend builder gel for clients who like to have an enhancement that is a little more on the flexible side as compared to acrylic, which is a great product but it is harder. Builder gel is sort of like if you take a plastic dish and drop it on the floor, it’ll bounce back versus an acrylic dish, if you drop it, it’ll crack. Builder gel is good for people who are heavy lifters (meaning their nails lift easily on the side) because it’s more flexible.”
Even I’ll admit that there are so many different types of nail gels out there that it’s hard to know the difference between them or which one is right for your particular nails. Kandalec went into a little more detail. “Builder gel frequently is a hard gel,” she says. “Hard gel is a nonporous gel that has to be filed off. Builder gel can either be soft gel or semi-hard gel or hard gel. The difference between [builder gel like] Solar Gel and Aprés Nail (which is a brand of gel tips) is that that is a full-coverage tip that is already pre-made. It’s made out of gel, but it’s adhered with more gel as opposed to builder gel. Builder gel you can sculpt with, apply it over a tip, or you can just do a structured manicure with it to give the apex the shape and the strength.”
Now that you have a little more background, read on for my experience getting builder gel for the first time.
