Essie Stay Longer Ultimate Top Coat

I had high expectations for something that has the word 'ultimate' in its name. It applies on well and it dries reasonably quick. The polish does provide a shiny finish with no sticky residue. That's about it.

I did my normal routine that included cleaning the nails removing any oils, applied a base coat and even used an Essie brand nail polish (as instructed). The coat lasted 1.5 days and it chipped big time. All I was doing was packing books into boxes!

Granted it was an older polish so I tried it again with a newer Essie polish. Again, it lasted about 1.5 days with smaller chips on the edge. In this second try, I did however do dishes and shower which can weaken the nail polish (no dishes in the previous trial). So in a way, it was stronger than the first try.

The instructions suggested to use one coat but perhaps if I had used two or more coats, it may have lasted longer. I like that it's fast drying and it was easy to apply with the brush shape. However, it looks like I'll have to venture out with gels for something to last longer than a week.

I paint my nails almost every week. I'm not a fan of gel polish or other long-wear polish options ie. dipping powder because of the removal process that no matter how tediously careful leaves them paper thin. This does mean that I spend a couple of hours a week towards having neat polished tips. For some background on my day-to-day in terms of my activities with regard to my manicure longevity with regular polish, I rinse and load the dishwasher, with serious, cleaning, handwashing dishes, and chores involving detergents I wear gloves and when I'm cooking dinner I wear gloves, I cook dinner 3 nights a week. But I do cook my breakfast and prep my lunch in the morning without gloves which involves a bit of chopping. I have short nails because I work doing deep tissue and facial massage. I'm a frequent hand-washer as well. I don't spend time soaking in the bath but I take longer hot showers. Essie is my favourite brand of polish because I like the rounded tip of the brush, that makes it easier for me to do a neater job near the cuticle. I have been using Essie's All-in-One Base and Top Coat which for reference starts wearing off at the tips in about two days. I usually do 2 coats of that over my colour and by the second day the colour is slightly worn off on the tips but not that noticeable since I wear nude shades. At the time of writing this review, I'm halfway through my bottle of Essie All-in-One so it's thickened and takes a while to dry completely. I read the instructions for Essie Stay Longer and it said to just do one layer of the top coat. So once my colour was dry and won’t leave imprints if I touched it, I applied a thin layer of Essie Stay Longer and capped the tips. It went on smoothly; I could see just a smidge of my colour come off on the brush when I painted the top coat. Waited for the top coat to completely dry and be non-imprintable before doing anything else. The next day I had a hard chip of polish come off on one of my ring fingers, so just painted a bit over the chipped area with my colour and painted over the whole nail with another layer of Essie Stay Longer. The following day I had another hard chip of polish come off the tip of my middle finger so I did the same thing as I did the previous day. The manicure stayed looking fine and started wearing off at the tips within a few days. I didn't have any more hard chipping that week. The next week I painted my nails I opted for two coats of Essie Stay Longer, to see how long my mani would last this time. My middle finger chipped the next day, so I fixed it up. And then polished chipped off the side of my other middle finger the next day and the tips wore off like usual. I wouldn’t say this top coat out performs any of the other ones I have tried from Essie. I probably would try another top coat I haven’t tried from Essie to see if it’s better than this one.

Cute looking bottle but completely overwhelmed by the strong smell as soon as partially opened. I tried on naked nails initially. It has a nice wide brush, it dried quickly and gave a nice shine. I used in the evening and then washed my hair the next morning and could see bits flaking off while drying my hair. By mid morning I could see that it had pretty much disappeared from the top half of my nails (and spent most if a very boring meeting picking at the loose bits!). It came of nicely with very little remover and I tried again over a pale pink polish but the experience was the same - smelly, shiny, quick drying, chipped quickly.

Not for me but may work for others!