Essie Gel Couture Top Coat Review

First off I LOVED the brush. The tip is slightly rounded helping you get close to the cuticle without going onto it. It spreads well enough to cover nail easily and fast.

One coat of this top coat works amazing. It seals in the colour and gives it a nice sheen.

I left one nail on each hand to free to see if the top coat really helped seal it all in and help prevent chipping and it really did. The nails without started chipping within a few days the others lasted a week and a half. and i am really rough and work in pretty hands on work all day.

I think this is my new go to top coat for all my nail polish!

Just like any other good standard top coat. Makes the colour look super glossy and can be reapplied every few days. It was really easy to apply and dried relatively quickly

Let me start by saying that I love wearing nail polish and painting my own nails. I’ve tried multiple brands of polish and top coats including gel type polishes so I was super keen to try this Essie one to see how it compares. I’ve only used it for one week but so far I love it. Continue reading below to find out why.

I have used this top coat on top of the Essie gel polish colour I have. This polish has lasted really well. I have worn this polish for a week now and only one nail has started to chip (index finger on one hand). I’ve washed dishes my hand without gloves and I’m constantly typing at work too. There has been no tip wear or chipping or peeling around my cuticle area either.

This top coat is super shiny and adds a high shine to your nails making them look like they’re professionally done. This shine has lasted the whole time as well and has not dulled at all.

The consistency is slightly thicker than a regular top coat. But I’ve found all gel top coats to be on the thicker side. This polish went on smoothly and did not leave any streaks or bubbles.

The brush is really nice to use. The size enables you to apply the polish on your nail with three strokes. I also like to cap my nails when using a top coat. The brush is quite dense which allows you to fan the brush out across your nail when you are applying the polish. The dense brush also means it holds the right amount of polish to deposit on to your nail.

The bottle is a standard glass bottle with a twisted rectangular shape. It’s easy to hold and use. I like that this bottle is also white instead of being clear glass. This means that the polish is not exposed to too much light.

Overall I really like this polish and would definitely recommend this to everyone else.

Definitely recommend using a top coat. It makes your nail polish last longer and your nail stronger. It gives your nail and nice shiny/glossy affect. My nails looked as though they were done by a nail salon but happy to say it was just me.

Application was smooth and the top coat dried to the touch in only 1 minute. It was already resistant to dents and scratches in under five minutes. In a few hours it was fully set. I'm pretty sure it sped up the overall setting time of the polish beneath it.

When some of the top coat got onto my skin and I wiped it with my finger, the consistency surprised me. It has an almost oil like feel to it and it's very slippery rather than tacky like most top coats and polishes.

I don't know if it is possible, but it sure seemed as though the top coat shrunk as it dried... I noticed the next day that the polish was ever so slightly back from the tips of my nails, about half a milimeter but certainly noticeable up close. I definitely remember painting right to the tips of my nails. I can only assume it also shrunk at the base of my nails and on the sides too. It's not a big issue for me, but it's something to be aware of.

The final result was super shiny, I love how it looks! It lasted nine days without a single chip. On the seventh day of wear my sister asked me if I'd had my nails professionally done, so I would call that a win! It really does give a gel like finish in my opinion. I would recommend this as a long lasting, shiny and chip resistant top coat.

The application was a little tricky at first as the formula is very runny, but considering this was my first use it is probably good as it will thicken slightly with more uses as it dries out a little. Probably better to paint your nails on a surface rather than on the couch like I tried and almost got polish all over my pants a few times. It layered fine on top of previous coats.

While it has the shine of a gel, it didn't have the staying power, although better than other formulas I have used. The polish dries to a consistency like a flexible plastic, so if you flood your cuticles you may get a bit of lift on the side of your nail like I did. On nails where I didn't flood my cuticles the edges stayed down fine. The polish on the tips started to wear after three days but I only had some chipping begin about 6 days after the application, so decent staying power compared to some other polishes.

Overall there was nothing too special about this nail polish, better longevity than regular polish but nothing really more than other polishes aimed at longwear.

Essie’s Gel Couture top coat is packaged in an opaque white twisted bottle (the coloured polish is in a twisted clear glass bottle). The twisted shape of these bottles makes it horribly uncomfortable to roll the bottles before use, and Essie should have considered this, especially since they recommend that polish bottles be rolled not shaken. (Shaking polish introduces air bubbles, which affect both the formula over time and the polish application.) These bottles also don’t fit into each other, the twists and bases don’t line up, so they take up a lot more room than Essie’s traditional square bottles, or round polish bottles do.

After applying two coats of Essie’s Gel Couture in “Spiked With Style” I appliedone coat of this top coat. The wide, flat, round ended brush mirrors the cuticle area perfectly, making it really easy to get a perfect coat in just four swipes of the brush; one down the middle, one down each side, and then one across the tip to cap the free edge. The top coat has a really nice thin consistency that applies really well, and does have a rather cold feel upon application, that disappears quite quickly.

This top coat is better than any other traditional enamel top coat that I’ve used the the past. It doesn’t smudge the colour coats below (like some top coats do), and has a very smooth, glossy looking finish with a vibrant high-shine.

Silly me dinged one of my thumbs before the top coat was dry, and smudged the colour underneath, but it was easily fixed by rubbing a finger dipped in a tiny bit of nail polish remover lightly over the dented polish to smooth it out, and then simply reapplying a coat of top coat after the initial application had dried fully.

After 3 hours of typing the next day, the tops of my nails started to show signs of wear on the tips. By day 6, the wear was quite bad on my index fingernails, and on day 7 it began chipping on multiple nails. Essie’s Gel Couture states that you can get up to 14 days wear, and I only got half that. With other enamel polishes I usually end up with wear and chipping after 2-3 days, so 7 days wear before chipping for this Gel Couture range is really not bad.

This top coat is so great!!

The formula is lovely and paints on super smooth. It is super high gloss which I LOVE! It really brings the colour to life. The drying time is super fast! And it dries nice and hard leaving your nails feeling protected.

The bottle is a cool twisted geometric shape and interestingly it’s white rather than the usual clear bottle.

I absolutely recommend this top coat and can’t wait to try it over different polishes!

This makes your polish long lasting and super shiny. Would not use polish without this top coat from now on. It is fast drying too.

Using both the polish & top coat was definitely a better option, far better results as a combo. Took quite awhile to dry, but has set well. Quite a bit of chipping around the edges after a week (for the nails with just the top coat or just the polish) but haven't been overly cautious of my hands so perhaps 2 coats would have been more successful! Less chipping on nails with both.