If you love the holiday season as much as we do, then you’ve probably started looking for Christmas nail designs. Check out our festive manicure ideas that you can wear all season long.
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- Christmas Nail Designs
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- Christmas Acrylic Nails
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- Blue Christmas Nails
- Green Christmas Nails
- Black Christmas Nails
- Short Christmas Nails
- Recommendations
Christmas Nail Designs
Red, White and Green Stripes
Give your holiday manicure a fun Christmas twist with some bright red, white and green stripes. These can look like colorful plaid, wrapping paper or candy swirls. For a playful touch, alternate the stripes with some polka dots.
Mistletoe Nail Art
Get your nails ready for the holiday season by adding mistletoe art to the tips of your french mani. You can do this in your nail salon on just a few nails or your whole hand. Try pairing it with a red base color.
Velvet Nails
The velvet nail trend with its submerged and out-of-focus glitter is just perfect for a holiday mani. You can color-coordinate this with a velvet dress or other cozy christmas fabric.
Cute Christmas Nails
Candy Cane Nail Design
Candy cane stripes are the perfect holiday mani. They’re cute, relatively easy to do, and can be as understated or as bold as you want them to be. For something fun and subtle, try candy can french tips.
Snow And Snowmen Manicure
Holiday nail art is so much fun, and snowmen are always a good choice, especially if you want something festive but not religious. Try pairing them with some airbrushed snowflake designs.
Christmas Ornament-Inspired Nails
Ornament-inspired manicures are a good way to get fun and easy Christmas nails. You can be as elaborate as you want, making each fingernail unique.
Do not miss our post on how to tip nail salon.
Christmas Gel Nails
Red and White Santa Nails
This red type of manicure is the perfect choice for holiday fun. Santa Claus nails take a classic red nail design and add a bit of white. They’re ideal if you’re a fan of shiny red gel polishes.
Holiday Lights Nails
Start with a neutral gel nail base like pale pink nail polish, then add some wavy black lines and a few colored bulbs. If you want to get creative, include a few nail jewels for extra shimmer.
Glazed Donut Gel Mani
You can add a festive twist to this trendy Instagram nail look by including some golden glitter. This manicure is simple, sexy, and will look great at any holiday party.
Christmas Nail Art
Candy Canes and Gingerbread Men
Here’s one of the cutest Christmas nail art designs that we’ve seen so far. Everyone loves holiday candies and baked goods. If you don’t want to draw all of these by hand, it’s easy to find them as nail stickers.
Christmas Trees
A Christmas tree manicure is another one of the classic Christmas nail art ideas that we don’t think will ever go out of style. You can put individual trees against another color, or paint the whole nail green and decorate it.
Winter Animals
Holiday nail designs don’t have to reference a specific holiday. We love the idea of turning your french tips into cute little penguins or adding a white bear against a blue “snowy” base color.
Simple Christmas Nails
Christmas Colors
Instead of having a single accent nail, why not paint all of your nails different festive shades? Or, you can have one nail that features a Christmas tree, then paint the other nails different holiday shades.
Metallic Red Manicure
You can add some extra sparkle to a plain base color with a shiny stripe of red ribbon or some simple lines that make branches holding shiny red berries.
Plaid Nail Design
Christmas plaid is instantly recognizable and usually features some combination of shiny red, gold, black and silver lines. This manicure is nostalgic, but mature and appropriate for both work and holiday events.
Christmas Acrylic Nails
Long Candy Cane Nails
This manicure embraces holiday cheer because it’s so much fun. Acrylics are stronger than natural nails, so it’s easy to make them extra long.
Christmas Chocolate Manicure
Why not try acrylics in hot cocoa shades, with almond-shaped tips, this Christmas? These long nails are warm and luxurious looking, and will go well with the dark, warm tones of most holiday outfits.
Long, Diamond Glitter Acrylics
These acrylics are more low-key than a lot of the manicures we’ve looked at so far, but they’re classy and perfect for Christmas and New Year’s events. Just add a sparkly top coat to your glazed-donut manicure.
Shooting Stars
Add some gold or silver stars against a dark-colored base coat. The extra length that you can get with Acrylics makes it easy to have long, shooting stars across your holiday nails, a subtle nod to the stars atop the Christmas tree.
White Christmas Nails
Sparkling French Manicure
French tips look great with simple white polish, but you can transform this timeless manicure into something that’s perfect for your office’s holiday party by swapping out the plain white tips for silver glitter.
White and Blue Swirls
This manicure might remind you of wrapping paper or a winter snowstorm. It’s a good look for both daytime and evening events during the Christmas season.
Snowflakes
Use a clear or pale pink base coat, then add some white or silver snowflakes to the tips for a frosty effect. You can also include some accent nails with larger snowflake art to draw attention.
Blue Christmas Nails
Blue And Silver Stripes
Blue might not be one of the most common Christmas nail colors, but when you pair it with silver glitter, it looks festive and fabulous. This is another interpretation of the more common “candy cane” motif, but in cool tones.
Blue And Pink With Snowflakes
Blue Night Sky With Stars
If you’re looking for a different shade for your Christmas manicure (not one that everyone else at the party will be wearing), then check out these dark blue holiday nails. The silver stars look beautiful against the dark blue base coat, just like the sky on a chilly winter night.
Ice Princess Blue Nails
For a lighter shade of blue, why not follow the example of one of our favorite Disney princesses and paint your nails an icy shade of blue, combined with some frosty glitter and snowflake nail art.
Green Christmas Nails
Emerald Green And Gold Color Combo
Even a grinch would love these green and gold nails. They’re fun, eye-catching, and match your Christmas decor without being too over-the-top.
Sparkly Green Tips
You can add silver or gold glitter to this Christmas french manicure to coordinate it with your outfit. For an extra festive twist, add a Christmas tree accent nail.
Red and Green Nails
Red polish alternating with green will help to get your nails into the holiday spirit. You can divide the polish colors diagonally, or combine them into alternating stripes, perhaps with a frosty white french tip.
Black Christmas Nails
Black With White Snowflakes
This is a Christmas nail design with a very modern vibe. The white airbrushed snowflakes take advantage of the negative space for a dramatic effect. We think it looks a bit like a cozy holiday sweater pattern.
Regal Black And Gold Holiday Nails
This is the perfect manicure for New Year’s eve, since the gold leaf gives your nails a very festive finish. Try adding one or two accent nails with a golden snowflake.
Nightmare Before Christmas Nails
Here's a fun holiday manicure for anyone who likes Christmas, but loves Halloween, too. 1990’s kids will instantly get the reference, and everyone will want to get a closer look at your Instagrammable nail art.
Short Christmas Nails
Santa Hat Tips
Here’s a classic look that uses just two shades of polish. Unlike a lot of holiday nail art, you don’t need a lot of space for these, so they’re perfect for shorter nails.
Nude Nails With Red and Gold Glitter
Add some visual interest to your shorter nails with a bit of holiday glitter. The light and neutral base coat will make short nail shapes look longer, too.
Reverse French Manicure
French manicures are a classic look, but reverse French tips are a recent development- and we absolutely love them. You can use traditional Christmas colors like red and green, or you can use a sparkly nail polish at the base, then a solid color for the rest of the nail.
Recommendations
Christmas is the perfect time to get creative and try out some nail art or a festive, bold manicure.
We love the amount of different Christmas nail designs that we’ve seen. It’s so much fun to see what people do, every year. If you have any fun holiday nail ideas, please reach out and let us know.
Citations
Nail anatomy
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/
Finger nail plate shape and size for personal identification – a possible low technology method for the developing world - Preliminary report
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajhs/article/view/30795
Physics of nail conditions: why do ingrown nails always happen in the big toes?
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/
