Zoya nail polish review + 7-day wear test

I used to wear nail polish all the time. I felt naked without one, so I committed a lot of my time to maintaining a nice colourful manicure. I even owned a complete set with a LED light and a number of shellac gel polishes to make sure my manicure lasted even longer than normal nail polishes.

But one day when I was sitting in my living room with the aluminium foil and acetone on my nails (that’s how you remove gel nail polish), I had enough. I didn’t want to spend every two weeks going through this tedious process of removing my gel polish just to reapply a few new coats. The time and effort I put in just weren’t worth it anymore.

But I also knew that with normal nail polishes, I couldn’t even get good three-day wear out of them, so I wasn’t sure what to do.

After some thinking, I decided to declutter all of my gel polishes and my led light, and I was okay with never wearing nail polish again. As much as I love colourful nails, I never liked how much time I spent on my nails just to enjoy them for a couple of days, before needing to repeat the same process again.

That was around 6 years ago and I went without using nail polish for a while. After some time though I started missing it, so I decided to look into more innovative nail polishes that would behave like a normal polish but would still give me better longevity.

I started with CND Vinylux and this polish was pretty impressive for my nails, but I still wasn’t convinced – it was really hard to get it where I live, plus it didn’t really last me as long as I wanted it to. I also tried a few gel-like polishes in the drugstore, again, better than normal polish but I still wasn’t impressed with their longevity.

Then around 3 years ago I bought a Zoya nail test kit with a polish remover, base coat, topcoat and dryer drops. I also picked a nice colourful polish so I can do a complete manicure to really see how I like it. After the first time, I knew this is it – I finally found what I was looking for.

This may read like I’m sponsored by them, haha, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. I just really love Zoya nail polishes 🙂 So everything here is my honest opinion of Zoya nail polishes, and at the end, I’ll also show you a 7-day wear test to show you how long they last on the nails 😉

WHY I LOVE ZOYA NAIL POLISHES

The first obvious thing is how long this nail polish stays on my nails. I get a good 5-7 days wear out of them, depending on which colour I choose. With nude colour, I can wear it for 7 days because chipping is not that noticeable, but with darker colours, I usually have to coat my edges on the fifth day, so the chipping is not that visible. So for a normal nail polish that doesn’t need any special led light, this is pretty impressive. And on my toes the nail polish stays there for 2-3 weeks without any problems.

The second reason is that they’re not tested on animals. I try my best to use only beauty products and cosmetics that are cruelty-free, so the fact that these nail polishes are not tested on animals is really important to me.

The third, also very important reason is that they’re BIG10 free. Sometimes nail polishes contain ingredients that are toxic to your health, but with this nail polish, you are safe to use it without worrying about the nasties. Good news is that not only Zoya but also other brands started using safer ingredients, so whenever you see 5-free, 7-free or 3-free label when buying a nail polish that usually means they excluded a few of those toxic ingredients.

The fourth thing is that I don’t have to wait long for nail polish to dry. This is one thing that really surprised me with this nail polish. After good 10 minutes, my manicure is dry enough so I can softly touch it, but I still have to be a bit careful for another 20 minutes not to apply too much pressure, because if I’m not careful I can still dent it or leave an imprint on the polish.

And the last thing is that the prices are affordable, plus they have a great selection of colours. They probably have more colours than you’ll ever need, haha, but better a bit more than not enough, so you can curate a nice simple collection to cover all your needs.

HOW I APPLY ZOYA NAIL POLISH

I always start with Zoya Remove+ to clean my nails before applying the first coat. Then I apply a thin layer of Anchor base coat. I follow up with a layer of colourful polish of my choice.

Sometimes I do only one coat, other times I apply two. I noticed that this doesn’t affect the longevity of the polish, it just makes the difference in overall opaqueness. I finish with an Armor topcoat and I always make sure I secure tips of the nails. I also use Fast drops to speed up the drying time.

Like I said I bought a mini kit right at the beginning so I had all these products right from the start and they work wonders for me so I never experimented with not using a topcoat or basecoat or anything like that. I simply follow the instructions and that works great.

The only thing I don’t do is reapply a top coat every two days. This is something Zoya suggests you do, but honestly, I couldn’t be bothered. If I need to, I reapply a bit of colour at the end of my nails on the fifth day to extend the wear for a few days and that’s it.

So that’s the exact process I followed to apply the nail polish in pictures below, and the nail polish I chose is a coral red shade called LC.

Products mentioned in this blog post:

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ZOYA NAIL POLISH 7-DAY WEAR TEST

DAY 1

I took the first photo around 4 hours after painting my nails and as you can see everything looks absolutely fine – no chipping at all.

DAY 2

This is the second day and I took this photo exactly 24 hours after the first one. As you can see, everything looks absolutely fine, as it did on the first day.

DAY 3

On day three is when I noticed slight chipping at the sides, but nothing that would be visible quickly. I only noticed it when I looked really really closely.

DAY 4

On day four I had around the same amount of chipping as the previous day. So far I’m pretty happy with the results and it’s a good representation of how long the nail polish usually lasts on my hands.

DAY 5

This day I noticed a little bit more chipping but again, only on the sides, and looking from afar is not all that visible. This much chipping usually doesn’t bother me, I still feel that my nails are nicely manicured.

DAY 6

Now day six is where I noticed a lot of chipping and this is usually a day where I would remove the nail polish from my nails because I don’t find this look pretty anymore. But for the sake of this review, I let it on for one day more just to show you the results 😉

DAY 7

Now, this is very impressive for a 7-day wear test. With normal nail polishes that would usually happen on the third day, so I’m very happy with the results. But as you can see, there is a lot of chipping and it looks like I’m in desperate need to re-do my nails.

This is my review of Zoya nail polishes, and I really hope you find it useful!

Also, if you enjoyed this post I would be very happy if you’d share it. Thank you 🙂