The Best Base Coats and Top Coats: What Makes a Manicure Go the Extra Mile

The cool-girl, anything-goes approach to beauty is gloriously low-maintenance in every way but one: Keeping your nails in perfect condition is no easy feat. “The poor things are exposed!” says Ji Baek, the New York City–based founder of Rescue Beauty Lounge nail color, with a laugh. Riffling through your bag for house keys leads to chips; dousing on hand sanitizer to ward off that office-wide cold dulls shine. Same goes for pedicures, whether you’re digging your toes in the sand during a weekend in Miami or finding bliss (and smudged polish) in upward-facing dog pose. Factor in hard-to-pop seltzer cans, errant roller bags, and Net-a-Porter deliveries you impatiently rip into, and you might as well kiss your manicure-pedicure goodbye.

Well, almost. Thanks to a new crop of breakthrough base coats and top coats, your nail color may be poised to stick around for a few more days or even weeks. From break-proof rubberized textures to UV-protective formulas, we’ve rounded up the best of them—along with a few key tips from the pros. Here, our guide to a truly indestructible polish job.

Prep
Before picking up a bottle of base coat, swipe a cotton pad dipped in alcohol or non-acetone polish remover over your nail bed to remove traces of hand lotion or natural oils. “If you have any residue on your nails, the polish will just peel off,” explains pro manicurist Jin Soon Choi. Baek has gone one step further, bottling her own formula known as Base Coat Prep. The quick-drying, leave-on polish provides an instant matte surface when swept across the nail, which helps the base coat adhere. “It’s dummy-proof,” she explains.

Polish
Sheer, neon bright, glitter-bombed: There are nail lacquers to match every mood—or It bag. The key is to allow ample drying time between coats, particularly for darker, pigment-rich shades. “I always do pinkie to pinkie,” says Baek of working her way from the edge of one hand to the other before starting all over again. “It takes about five to eight minutes, and that’s about the right time to do another coat.” For a true no-budge hold, Orly’s Bonder sports a rubberized texture that acts like double-stick tape for your color.

Protect
Not only does the perfect top coat steel your polish against everyday wear, it also delivers gloss in abundance. Dolce & Gabbana’s High Shine top lacquer boasts a near-reflective finish. Still other formulas, like Dior’s Gel Top Coat and Guerlain’s Le Top Coat Gel, strive to capture the vinyl-like effect of a long-wear gel manicure—minus the cumbersome application. Manicurist Deborah Lippmann’s Addicted to Speed Top Coat also does double duty, reducing water penetration to the nail plate while helping a manicure to dry on fast-forward. She suggests applying it every three days to refresh shine, while Baek offers a different tip aimed at longevity: “A day after your manicure, you want to generously bless your cuticles with a really great cream,” she says. “It means three weeks before you’ll need another pedicure.”

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