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I am fully prepared for the possibility that this post is the one where the internet at large says, this girl is crazy.

I have really enjoyed writing with great enthusiasm about color analysis so far! We’ve talked about the best hair colors for soft summers, cool summers, and light summers. I’ve done Soft Summer Eye Makeup Ideas and the best summer nail colors for both soft summers and light summers. (And I plan to do the cool summers soon, then move on to the colors that summer season women might reach for in cooler weather!)

But I feel like this is the place where some readers are going to be like, this is too much. And I’m okay with that!

This post is borne out of my love of color analysis but also hating to waste the stuff I already have. I had a pretty decent collection of nail polishes at the time I was IDed as a soft summer, and most of them didn’t work for my season. So I set about figuring out how to adjust them to get a color that would work for me.

(In this post, we’re using regular nail polish because I had it on hand, and it’s what most people use. But you can do this with gel polishes as well! Theoretically you could also do this with dip but I have never done it — hopefully someone will and will post about it!)

Why adjust a nail polish for your color season?

The idea with color analysis is that you’re going to get the best overall look when your colors are cohesive. You want them to mimic the contrast level, the clarity or mutedness, and the warmth or coolness of your complexion.

So, if you’re a newly IDed soft summer, you may have a closet full of clothes and a drawer full of nail polishes that are too clear and warm for you.

It’s super tempting to just throw it all out, but for summers in particular, it’s a bad idea! Our colors are more difficult to just go out and buy in a complete wardrobe in a store. Our palette is just less available than some of the others. So plan to make it a slow move.

When it comes to nail polishes, much of what you have can be adjusted by mixing colors. I’m going to show you how to do that in this post.

Starting with a mixer color (and my holy grail shade)

So, no suspense here: my holy grail shade for adjusting a regular nail polish color is essie’s “the best-est”.

So, obviously this is a great soft summer color in its own right: cool, muted, and of moderate depth. It looks a little bit purple in the Amazon photo, but it’s much more blue, if you check my photos below.

Of course, I’m shocked as I’m writing this post to learn that “the best-est” has been discontinued! So “mooning” may also be a good choice if the link above is sold out. “mooning” may even be better for light summers, honestly. essie’s “air dry” is also a gorgeous color match.

And if you prefer OPI, Check Out the Old Geysirs is a great choice for you.

So: I started with essie here because that’s my preferred brand, and probably 90% of my regular nail polish collection is essie. If you’re loyal to another brand, find an equivalent polish in their line. (I’ll make some recommendations at the end of this post.) I am mostly a gel nails girl these days, and did the same process with the set below, using the third color from the left.

I do think it’s probably best to stick within the same brand for this process, but I honestly don’t always and there’s never been a truly awful result.

How to adjust a nail polish color for soft summer

So the idea here isn’t that we’re dramatically changing the color. We’re taking an existing color and making it soft and muted.

What you need

You’ll want:

• the polish you want to change
• essie’s “the best-est” or whatever your adjustor shade is
• foil or another surface to mix on
• a spare nail polish brush

(I use q-tips in these photos to mix, but that’s only because I’m soaking the brush in polish remover between tests! You can just mix with the brush.)

For the purposes of this post, I’m mixing the shades on foil so you can see them. I don’t usually bother to do this! And you’ll probably do it the first time and then start mixing in the bottle like I do. But it’s a good way to make sure you’re going to like the outcome.

Let’s start here:

hi maintenance

So, that’s essie’s “hi maintenance”, a very sheer warm pinky-peach. I never wore it. So, you can see that I’ve got, like, 80% hi maintenance here and 20% the best-est. (If you want it in drops, that’s probably 8 drops of hi maintenance and 2 drops of the best-est!)

I’m going to mix them with a q-tip…

So, I have a pretty color here! It’s worth noting there that when you mix a sheer shade with an opaque shade, the opaque shade ends up being very dominant. So this color changed more than the other ones will.

Okay, I have to tell you — I had THE MOST DIFFICULT TIME getting these photos to show the difference between the polish colors. Here’s the best shot I got of the original hi maintenance shade (right) vs. the blended shade (left).

ferris of them all

Okay, up next: essie’s “ferris of them all”, a warm burgundy with gold shimmer. It’s a bit muted, but much too warm for any summer season.

Once it’s mixed, it looks like this:

You can see that it’s much cooler with the addition of a little bit of the blue!

And now, side by side (again, a terrible photo, this is my weakest blogger skill and I need to try harder…). This is now a beautiful soft summer shade! The original color is on the left, and my blended shade is on the right. You can see that it’s distinctly cooler and more muted.

now or never

Okay, now for the expressie “now or never”, a true black.

Somehow, I failed to get a mixed photo of this!

The black was tough to get a picture of and I seem to have gotten some fuzz in the topcoat, but you can see that the left is the clear black, and the right is a cooler, softer, and more muted shade. I think it will still read as black by itself, but it’s going to be more harmonious with me.

handmade with love

And then finally, I bought this color for the sole purpose of seeing if we could use this strategy on a color that’s basically the opposite of the soft summer palette: bright, clear, and warm. This is essie’s “handmade with love”.

This is a mess for soft summers — the kind of color that wears us, not the other way around.

So, let’s see!

Honestly, that’s a significant improvement! Still pretty clear, but the color has gone from utterly clashing with a soft summer to something that may not be your best color ever but is still def wearable.

And here it is on my finger, with the original shade on the elft and my adjusted one on the right.

Our new, adjusted color is muted and nearly neutral — a lot better! If you love this color and you want to wear it, this is one way to do so.

But that’s still not a soft summer color!

True! “ferris of them all” still has gold shimmer and “handmade with love” is still orange and blah blah blah.

But I have two main reasons for making this post: cost and fun.

Cost: If you’re a new soft summer, you should not throw out every nail polish you own and buy every shade from my post about soft summer nail polishes. It’s a waste of money. Much of what you already have can still be used if you buy one additional polish and use it to change the colors a lil bit. It’s a huge waste of money and landfill space to get your colors done and throw 80% of your stuff away.

Fun: We still need to be able to express ourselves! So many color analysis people seem to get stuck in this joyless austerity of “that’s not my color, I can’t wear it.” Color analysis is not a life sentence and it shouldn’t mean you can’t wear colors that you love.

Personally, I would never reach for that “handmade with love” shade myself, but if you love it, wear it! If you love it but want to tweak it a little to make it more wearable for you, even better. And now you know how. But if you’re going to do color analysis and still have fun and wear what you want, this is a strategy to make that happen.

Mixing colors in the nail polish bottle

So, I mixed these on foil so I could take pictures for this post. But typically I adjust the polishes directly in the bottle. You probably will too, if you choose to try this–it’s a lot easier.

The trick is just to go slow, honestly. If you add too much blue, you can’t get it back out, so it’s better to drop a little and shake, drop a little and shake, and just keep checking it. I’ll typically pour a small amount in directly from the blue bottle at first, but I don’t recommend you start there! And shake really well between additions.

You can adjust a LOT of nail polishes off a single bottle of “the best-est” — I’ve had that one for a couple years and it’s still half full.

If you adjust a polish using this strategy, please let me know in the comments below!