How to measure your nail size

Sizing your nails accurately is the most important thing you must do before ordering custom press-on nails. Just like how we have sizes for our shoes and our clothes, it only makes sense that we do for our nails as well. There is no one size fits all, and even “standard sizes” such as S, M, L don’t really apply here. Just because you have large hands does not necessarily mean you have large nail beds. Even between your two hands, your nail sizes may not be symmetrical.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT?

With clothes, if your sweater turns out to be a little too big, you could choose to wear it as an oversized look. That does not apply for nails. If your press-on nails are too big, they will overlap on your cuticles and skin and pop off extremely easy.

If your press-on nails are too small, you might see your natural nail peeping out. Or, you apply excessive pressure to glue them on which may then cause a painful aching and soreness from the press-on nail pinching your own.

All you need is a tape, a marker, and a ruler

Step 1: Place a piece of tape across your nail. Do not stretch the tape tight, you want it to sit gently over the nail.

Step 2: Find the widest part of your nail and use the marker to mark lines on the tape. It is important to take note of which side of the marker line is lined up to the edge of your nail. Each nail size usually differs by only 1 mm so precision is important. See image below – I am measuring the INNER side of my marker line to get 14mm. If I had measured the OUTER sides, that would make it 15mm.

Step 3: Remove the tape and measure the markings against a ruler to get your mm measurement.

Step 4: Repeat this for all TEN fingers – your hands may not have symmetrical nail sizes.

Step 5: Review the measurements you’ve written and and question whether they make sense. For example, if you have two nails with the same measurements written down, but they look visibly different in size then you may want to remeasure.

Step 6: Remeasure as many times as needed until you are confident about the measurements.

Mark down your nail sizes like so (Thumb to Pinky):
Left (mm): 14-10-12-11-8 Right (mm): 15-10-12-12-8