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Okay, this is going to be one of those utterly annoying situations where the answer is “it depends”.
So, can I get acrylics on a broken nail? It depends.
And the best advice is always going to be to talk to your nail tech or visit a nail salon. A professional nail technician is always going to be able to look at your specific injury and be able to give you good advice. And a good one will always prioritize your nail health over selling you a manicure.
But this post will go over all the different situations that could possibly happen with a broken nail, and will make some suggestions about what you might be able to do in each scenario.
I hope it doesn’t hurt too much!
If it’s a new injury and it bled
No acrylics or any type of artificial nails for a few days! If your nail injury bled, you run the risk of getting remover or acrylic powder into your bloodstream. Wait a few days for things to heal up before you decide to go get your acrylic nails redone.
If the cut is still open when that remover hits your skin, it’s going to hurt like you wouldn’t believe. Wait a couple days with a band-aid on it to avoid unnecessary pain! When the skin underneath has healed up a bit you can get your nails redone.
(for the same reason: if you want to use hydrogen peroxide to clean your nail, dilute it!!)
If your natural nail has lifted up from your nail bed
This happened to me once and it was SO distressing and painful. This is another one where you need to give it some healing time.
If you currently have extensions or any kind of length on the nail, you probably want to use a set of nail clippers to cut the length off the broken nail. It’s up to you whether you cut this one short or clip them all down. You’re going to have a band-aid on the lifted one for a few days! So it’s going to stand out anyway.)
If it’s the slightest lift, you can have some hope that it might reattach or grow out quickly enough that you don’t have to live with the lifting for very long. If that’s all you’re dealing with, then you might just want to keep a band-aid on it for a couple weeks. In this case, I wouldn’t bother trying to remove any acrylic or builder gel you currently have on. Just keep the band-aid on, especially when you are washing your hair. (Ask me how I know. If you can get someone else to wash your hair until it grows out, do so.)
Is it your dream look? No. Is it better than accidentally ripping it all the way off? One thousand percent.
If the nail is stil partially attached, you may want to just wait a few days, then clip it as close to your fingertip as you can. You’ll want to move the nail as little as possible, and it would hurt a LOT to cut it down to where the break is. If there’s acrylic on this partially attached nail already, you will want to remove it eventually. But give it at least a few days, because both nail polish remover and the nail file or drill will hurt a lot before the skin underneath is healed up.
If the nail came off completely, you’re in for a longish healing process. Depending on your age, your overall nail health, and lots of other individual factors, a new nail can grow back in as little as two months or as long as six months. For a while, you’re not thinking about gel manicures, you’re thinking about when the nail plate will grow back. Get fanatical about cuticle oil and take as good care of your nails as you possibly can while it grows back.
(While I was researching this post, I found a thread of women debating whether or not you can put press-ons over the skin while your nail is growing back. I asked a manicurist and apparently this is too likely to lead to nail infection and you should not do it! I described the thread, and she said that if it was her sister’s wedding and the skin under the nail had healed enough, she would suggest putting a fake nail on for a few hours (photos and ceremony) with the sticky tabs, NOT GLUE. So, the more you know: if it’s not the biggest day of your life, don’t put a press-on or extension anywhere near that missing nail plate.)
If you have a horizontal break in your nail
If the nail broke under an existing acrylic nail, the good news is that your manicurist will know how to fix it. It’ll probably shorten the life of your manicure though.
When a nail breaks horizontally, the first thing your nail tech will do is strip the nail back to bare nails. So if it’s a broken acrylic nail that has torn but not broken completely, you’re probably looking at a silk wrap or fiberglass patch, which will strengthen the break. Depending on your preferred manicure style, this might be applied with brush-on nail glue, base coat, or gel. This strengthens the broken part of the nail enough that you can put your acrylic manicure back on top.
(If you’re a DIY girl, you can do this yourself with a small piece of a tea bag. The hard part of doing this DIY is holding your nail in the exact right spot while you’re curing the gel or holding it perfectly still while you wait for the coat of glue to dry.
So a horizontal minor break is easy to fix.
If it tore all the way across horizontally, most nail techs are going to opt for an extension rather than a silk wrap on a totally broken-off piece of nail. Whether you choose tips or full coverage will probably depend on the nail shape you chose for the other, unbroken nails.
If you have a vertical break in your nail
I have one of these and it’s so annoying! It’s a common issue, especially for those of us who have c-curve nail shapes. This “split nail” is when you get a narrow break between each half of the nail.
It is a result of brittle nails/weak nails, or is sometimes caused by damage to where the nail grows from. I have no memory of an injury to this finger specifically in childhood — the only thing I can think is that I once closed my fingers in a minivan door. But the nail splitting dates back so far I can’t even be sure.
Mine is always much less obvious when I am actually taking good care of my nails. So the best way to limit this is to be sure that the nails are “fed’ and hydrated with cream and cuticle oil. Dense, heavy hydration with oils is the only thing that works for me.
But my temporary fix is to keep gel on that nail all the time — even if I am letting my nails breathe or going manicure-free at the beach, I have a little bit of gel on half of that nail to hold it together. I suspect a silk wrap would be even better, to strengthen it before you even get the cracked nail.
The problem with the vertical split is that it always starts with a tiny crack and then leads to further damage when it catches on your hair, your clothing, whatever… And then it’s broken off the entire nails or a lot of the free edge. So being diligent about keeping gel polish on it really streamlines my life.
What’s your next move with your broken nail?
