The Best Nail Polish Brands of 2022 to Keep On

By Marci Robin

To be asked the question, "What's the best nail polish?" is to be faced with an impossible task. Because we all have different preferences when it comes to consistency, colors, and ingredients (or lack thereof), "best" means different things to different people. Formulas vary greatly from brand to brand, and even within some brands, there can be a huge variety of polish types: traditional, quick-drying, gel, peel-off, sheer, opaque — the options are endless, and "best" is subjective.

But one thing is for sure: Some nail polish brands are going above and beyond to make it even harder to choose our favorite nail polishes because they keep cranking out such chic colors, such long-lasting lacquers, and such ingredient-aware formulations. Whether your priority is a virtually indestructible chip-free finish, shade-shifting optical illusions, application ease, or something that will dry before you can spell "formaldehyde-free," these brands won't let you down.

Sure, lots of beauty brands make nail colors, but some (like the ones you'll find below) really prioritize polish. Here are the best nail polish brands — the ones that will inspire you to hang bottle racks on your bathroom wall and fill them with entire shade ranges, to post a borderline excessive amount of hand selfies to your Instagram Stories, to never go a day without a manicure. Many of these brands are available at salons, but they're all are available to fulfill your at-home mani needs.

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The in-person Sundays salon experience is the gentlest, most soul-nurturing manicure we've ever known, and we can only hope more studios pop up outside of New York City. Until then, no matter where you may be, you can still enjoy professional-grade polishes in spirit-invigorating shades like this sweet shade of pale pink, L.01. A Best of Beauty Award winner, it offers an opaque finish, so its almost-white hue won't go unnoticed. (No. 13, a chili pepper red, also won a Best of Beauty Award.)

Founded by Jeff Pink (perhaps the most perfect name for a nail polish brand founder), Orly has been around since the '70s, when Pink was credited with popularizing the now ubiquitous French manicure. Since then, the brand has become one of the most recognizable in the industry, regularly releasing new colors of its traditional lacquer, like the best-selling shimmery peach shade, Trendy (seen here), and its Breathable 1-Step Manicure polish.

As soon as Olive & June expanded beyond being a chain of Southern California nail salons and into a full-blown nail polish brand, it won our hearts. Not only does the brand launch some of the most charming seasonal collections of colors several times a year — the metallic rose gold OJSM, seen here, remains a classic — but it makes applying them easier for even the clumsiest DIYers thanks to its famous Poppy tool. But if you're still not feelin' so hot about doing your own nails, Olive & June recently made manicures even easier with an especially size-inclusive collection of press-on nails.

Few brands have created nail polish formulas that let amateurs paint their nails as flawlessly as Essie's original enamel, available in a seemingly endless array of foolproof colors. In addition to its beloved classic nail polish — Not Red-y for Bed won a Best of Beauty Award for being a bright-red champ — the brand offers the fast-drying Expressie, the long-wearing, gel-inspired Gel Couture, the treatment-meets-hue hybrid Color + Care, and much more. But we'll always have a least a few shades of the original enamel in our nail polish shoebox.

KBShimmer makes every manicure feel like elaborate nail art with just a couple coats of polish. The brand is gaining well-deserved popularity for its seemingly magical, shade-shifting lacquers — like the reflective Tapped Out, seen here — as well as holographic, thermal, magnetic, multichrome, jelly, and traditional-finish polishes. If your manicure goal is maximum impact with minimal effort, KBShimmer deserves an entire shelf in your nail-polish wardrobe.

One look at Smith & Cult's hefty, cylindrical bottles and sculptural, intentionally imperfect gold caps and you know its chicness is untouchable. But as with most things, it's what's inside that counts, and Smith & Cult's polishes live up to its display-worthy packaging. The brand undeniably excels at not-quite-normal shades, like the mustard yellow Color Me Curious (seen here), but don't overlook its more classic colors — soft shimmers, pretty pinks, and deep bordeaux hues that no collection is complete without.

Zoya makes a mind-blowing number of nail polish shades — well over 600 — and like the brand itself, each one has a person's first name. OK, so our Best of Beauty-winning pink, Tweedy, may not be a common name, but there's Sabrina, Joyce, Kendal, Megan, Ryan, Marcy, Monica…we couldn't possibly list them all here. But trust us when we say Zoya has nailed the nuances that make no two shades quite the same.

Sure, the bottle may be a work of art in and of itself, but you'll be able to say the same about your manicure, too, when you use one of Emilie Heathe's Nail Artist Nail Polishes. The bamboo-spiked formula also features coconut and sea buckthorn oils, and it comes in a limited, inspired selection of colors like Billions — the closest thing we can think of to painting your nails in a melted gold bar.

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With nearly 250 shades available, OPI is one of the most prolific nail polish producers. Whether you've painted your nails yourself or gone to a salon, there's a decent chance you've had either an OPI Nail Lacquer, Infinite Shine, or Gel Color shade applied at some point — or perhaps even one of the brand's Powder Perfection dip powders. Thankfully, most of OPI's shades, like the Best of Beauty Award-winning orange PCH Love Song, are available in every format.

Jin Soon Choi is known for bringing both elegance and rule-breaking fun to the manicures seen on runways and in editorial shoots, and her namesake nail polish brand, Jinsoon, absolutely captures her essence. The brilliant nail artist insisted on enduring, healthy formulas that resist chipping, dry quickly, and come in every shade any mood could call for. We're especially big fans of Palma, the Best of Beauty Award-winning shade of green born of a collaboration with Suzie Kondi.

Named for its legendary nail-artist founder, Deborah Lippmann is celebrated for its Gel Lab Pro collection of long-lasting, glossy colors. The brand is regularly churning out stunning shades — we love the edgy neutral that is When Doves Cry — all of which are formulated to support nail strength with each application. And if you're an especially big fan of the brand's best-selling pinks, nudes, and corals, you'll be pleased to know that some of them are now available in lip-gloss form, too.

Founded a decade ago, Pear Nova was born of CEO Rachel James noticing the underrepresentation of medium to dark skin tones in the nail-color industry. It has since become an increasingly popular brand due to not only its Classic Lacquer in eye-catching colors (like My Candy Rain, seen here) but also its Gel Lacquer. Some of the brand's best-selling shades are available in value-priced Duos — you get both the Classic and Gel Lacquers together — so you can always count on your favorite color.

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Sally Hansen has been a drugstore nail polish staple for as long as many of us can remember. Good ol' Sally has always been there for any of our color whims, and with one of the biggest ranges of formulas — Xtreme Wear, Color Therapy, Color Foil, Insta-Dri, Miracle Gel, and the latest line, Good Kind Pure (the shade Crystal Blue won a Best of Beauty Award in 2021) — there's truly something for every at-home manicure need and preference, all at affordable prices.

Why just eat your veggies when you can use them to paint your nails? Nailtopia's Bio-Sourced Chip-Free Nail Lacquer is formulated with mostly fruit- and vegetable-derived ingredients like blueberries and spinach. There are even alpha hydroxy acids in there to help your nails absorb strengthening ingredients. It's innovation like that — and colors like Seas the Day (seen here) — that has made Nailtopia one of our newer faves.

Butter London was founded as a quirky and ingredient-conscious nail polish brand in 2005, and it has since expanded to include other cosmetic categories. But we keep coming back to its fun array of nail colors and toppers, like the Best of Beauty Award-winning Patent Shine 10x Nail Lacquer in All You Need Is Love, an explosion of multicolor glitter. We also love the Jelly Nail Strengtheners, which bolster nails like a treatment while providing a sheer wash of fun, shiny color.

Le Mini Macaron is the nail polish brand for the busy gel manicure lover who's ready to take the process into their own hands. Its innovative Gel Polish lets you skip two rounds of lamp curing by building the base and top coats into the color — like this bluish charcoal, Black Sesame — without compromising on lasting power.

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CND is arguably best known for Shellac, which arguably helped make gel manicures the hugely popular nail salon phenomenon they are now. But while Shellac may be the gold standard for gel manis, the brand's Vinylux is the gold standard for long-wear formulas of traditional polish — it may dry super-quick, but it wears for an inexplicably long time. The shade Bordeaux Babe, seen here, won a Best of Beauty Award for our top dark red pick. (P.S. Select shades are also available on Amazon.)

Morgan Taylor might have been made by nail techs for nail techs, but plenty of us amateur manicurists have discovered that its polishes are a must-have at home. In addition to Professional Nail Lacquer — we love the shade Mint Chocolate Chip, seen here — the brand also makes Peel-Off Glitter (which is inordinately fun to both wear and remove), as well as a range of base coats and topcoats, like React Breathable 3-in-1.

We love when a celebrity comes out of left field and totally nails their seemingly random beauty-brand pursuits. That's the case with Machine Gun Kelly's UN/DN LAQR, one of the biggest and best beauty surprises of late. The chip-resistant polishes and toppers speak to a wide variety of at-home manicurists, but MGK is hyper-focused on what he considers just as important as color, finish, and longevity: the brush. "I want people to try it and enjoy it, so that was why we made the brush thicker," he told Allure. "Maybe if there's a brush award, we would like to win that. So in 2022, we are coming for Best Brush." Noted.

Mischo Beauty's philosophy is to "do no harm as we innovate across the beauty landscape," and that's exemplified in the brand's Nail Lacquer. Ten-free from the start, the formula has already won multiple Best of Beauty Awards — Run the World earned the seal most recently for being our favorite black nail polish — thanks to its luxurious glossiness and consciously elegant approach to polish.

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For Tmrw hasn't been around very long, but it has already proven it's going to be around for many tomorrows with its thoughtful design- and wellness-minded shades and smart formulas. The creamy, gentle shade For Later is a Best of Beauty winner, and it's one of a limited, mindfully curated collection of colors that feel simultaneously classic and contemporary.

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