If you have fair skin, anything too beige or too dark will make your hands look pale and sickly. "Choose a clean, creamy color to counter any redness in your skin," says Shel Pink, founder of SpaRitual. Stick with colors with a pink or purple undertone -- these will actually make your hands look less ruddy.
Dolce & Gabbana The Nail Lacquer in Petal, $20, has a hint of mauve that makes it really flattering on fair skin. The color is slightly lavender in a really pretty way.
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Skin tone: fair
Essie Nail Polish in Don't Sweater It, $8, is described as a "warm, cozy, creamy mauve," which is dead on. There's something truly fall-appropriate about this shade. On fair skin, it looks like the perfect marriage of beige and purple.
The hottest nail polish shade for fall is barely a color at all. It's nude.
We know what you're thinking — "ugh, so boring." But trust us, it's so much prettier than it sounds. We're not talking about baby pinks or sheer beige tones. The nude nail polish colors that we're most excited about this season are opaque enough to make a statement, and they have trendy undertones that range from mauve to gold.
Choosing a nude nail polish color may seem easy, but it's actually harder than you might think. More than any other shade, nudes are susceptible to that all-too-common scenario where it looks gorgeous in the bottle, but you walk out of the nail salon hating your manicure. And that's because nude nail polish needs to perfectly complement your skin tone in order to work.
"You want a polish that's close to your own skin tone — but better," explains Katie Cazorla, star of the show "Nail Files." She recommends matching the polish to your foundation color — not your hands.
Don't get duped by the matte trend either. "With a neutral color, you want a high shine finish," says nail guru Jin Soon Choi. "It makes the nail stand out against your skin rather than blend in and look dead."
We rounded up our favorite nude nail polishes and divided them into categories for fair, medium, olive, and dark skin tones. They're all super-shiny, saturated colors — perfect for when you want to take a break from that four-tone glitter ombré manicure that's become your go-to.
