I started painting my nails when I was 10, as a way to help me stop anxiously biting my nails. I no longer bite my nails, but giving myself a manicure every week remains one of the most important elements of my self-care routine. As you can imagine, I’ve given myself hundreds — maybe even thousands — of manicures. I have tried every nail polish, at every price point, in every combination. And people always ask me if there’s really a difference between cheap nail polish and the expensive designer brands. I decided to find out. I put the most expensive nail polish in the world to the test against my favorite drugstore brand to find out, once and for all, which is best. And the answer might surprise you. RELATED: __*» I tried a $30 blowout vs. a $100 celebrity blowout
I tried a $20 pedicure vs. a $120 rich lady pedicure *__ This nail polish ($50, Sephora) is the exact shade of red as the red soles of Louboutin heels. Making this red nail polish brings the Louboutin full-circle; if you’re not up on your expensive shoe history, the story goes that Christian Louboutin found his early shoe designs somewhat lacking IRL, so he grabbed his assistant’s red nail polish and painted the soles. This nail polish ($50, Sephora) looks like a fetish object — and that’s not a coincidence. The long, icepick-looking handle is the exact same height as the famous 8" Loubi ULTIMA ballerina heels. Like those shoes, this nail polish is meant to be a beautiful sculptural object first, and something of use second. Honestly, this is beautiful to look at — really heavy, thick glass with a black gradient revealing the actual red polish ($50, Sephora) at the top. But though the bottle itself is large and heavy, you don’t get much product for your money. According to the brand, a bottle of Rouge Louboutin nail polish contains 0.4 oz of varnish. To compare, a classic bottle of Essie nail polish contains 0.46 oz, and both OPI and Sally Hansen bottles contain 0.5 oz each. There’s no way you’re going to be able to store the Rouge Louboutin polish ($50, Sephora) in a drawer — it is GIGANTIC. As you can see, it’s much taller than a can of Coke. It’s nearly the same height as a wine bottle. If you want to buy this nail polish, you’ll need to commit to having it sit out somewhere; there’s absolutely no way it’ll fit in a small space. This nail polish is FIFTY DOLLARS OF ACTUAL U.S. CURRENCY. You could literally buy every shade of nail polish that Wet N Wild makes for that price, and still have enough for a coffee. Like the Louboutin heels themselves, this polish is outrageously priced — so I was expecting the actual product to be really, really good. I was disappointed. According to the brand, I could expect “Highly pigmented, super glossy formula achieves in just two coats the effect of 20 layers of traditional lacquer” from the Rouge Louboutin ($50, Sephora). Just taking the brush out of the bottle and seeing how runny the polish really was — well, it left me skeptical. The brush is very thin and slightly triangular in shape. The bristles are very long, extremely flexible, and are all the same length (which means you have a “flat” tip, rather than a rounded brush shape). This means the brush will be harder to control as you paint your nails, especially when paired with a thin polish formula. This ice pick-looking cap is #aesthetic as hell. It looks beautiful on a vanity. It’s stunning on Instagram. If I had to fight to the death using only beauty products, Rouge Louboutin is definitely the first nail polish I’d pick up. This stabby cap makes the polish an absolutely nightmare to use. Because it doesn’t come off. Many high-end nail polishes have decorative caps — Smith & Cult, Butter London, jinSOON, Cle De Peau. But the “fancy” caps are removable, and when you pull them off, there’s a short, easy to hold cap underneath. This is so you can, y’know, actually use the polish comfortably. Louboutin’s seven inch long, weighted Death Eater wand cap does not come off. Though the brand promised “ergonomic” control, this cap is heavy, it’s awkward, and I found it impossible to hold comfortably. And my manicure suffered accordingly. On the bright side, the color of the polish doesn’t change with more coats — it’s exactly as bright red with three coats as with one. On the less bright side, that shit is STREAKY. It’s streaky with one coat, even streakier with two coats, then opaque but blobby with three. This didn’t fill me with confidence, but hey. Paper is just paper! It could surprise me… right? Let’s get this out of the way first: Even using my non-dominant hand, I can paint my own nails as well as a professional manicurist. I have polish skills that I worked hard to develop. But when I picked up the Rouge Louboutin, my confidence in those skills was murdered. Using this expen$ive polish, I had disaster after disaster. I couldn’t get a good grip on the cap, so I flooded my cuticles. The brushes were so flexible that they slipped and slid all over the skin around my fingers. I felt like a clumsy baby, and it was WEIRDLY demoralizing. This felt like trying to sign my name using a down feather attached to the end of a remote control. NOPE. This is my perfect recipe for chip-proof nails, and I was sure it would stand me in good stead — even with the confidence-destroying Loub red. And here’s how this ~incredibly expensive~ nail polish held up. On the bright side: My nails weren’t stained, which does often happen with really bold red nail polishes (yep, even though a good base coat — those pigments aren’t a joke). That’s the only good thing I can say about the Rouge Louboutin nail polish. Let’s take a closer look. This is not what I expect from a luxury brand like Louboutin. Beautiful packaging is great, but the quality of the product itself has to match up with the aesthetics. Haute Springs ($8, Ulta) is a bright, cool-toned red polish that is about half a shade darker and a touch more pink than the Louboutin red. The Sally Hansen Color Therapy line ($8, Ulta) is infused with Argan oil, which supposedly adds moisture and helps prevents chipping. As someone with breakable, peely nails, I stan HARD for the entire Color Therapy collection — it helps my otherwise fragile nails grow long and strong. According to the brand, a bottle of Haute Springs ($8, Ulta) contains 0.5 oz of red nail polish. Compare that to Rouge Louboutin, which contains 0.4 oz of polish for $50. But you can’t use the Sally Hansen as a potential weapon, or as your wand if you’re suddenly accepted to Hogwart’s. So. Haute Springs ($8, Ulta) applied a bright, poppy red, then dried about half a shade darker. The polish itself is thick, but not too thick, which made it really easy to maneuver and control across the nail. It also dries really fast, and perhaps because of the Argan oil, has a unique floral smell. The smell goes away when the polish dries, but you will open this bottle and be like “What IS that?” But the best thing of all is the brush. The wide, flat wand attached to the brush ($8, Ulta) is ALSO a gift — it allows the polish to flow slowly and evenly down the wand, onto the brush, then onto your nail. I never appreciated how much this one teeny detail improves my DIY manicure experience, but holy hell, it REALLY does. That said, if you’re used to a thinner brush — say you’re a die-hard Essie fan — it may take some practice to get used to a more thicc version. One coat of Haute Springs ($8, Ulta) was lighter red, but unlike the Louboutin, remarkably unstreaky. Two coats gave you a fully opaque, bright red experience. Three coats looked exactly the same as two did — always a good sign. The fewer layers I have to pile on, the better. Even using my non-dominant hand, I couldn’t have asked for a better manicure experience. Haute Springs ($8, Ulta) flowed evenly and non-streakily off the brush. The brush fanned out perfectly and covered almost the entire face of my nails. It didn’t flood my cuticles. After my expensive Rouge Louboutin failure, my manicure confidence had taken some knocks. Maybe I really wasn’t good at doing my nails. Maybe the problem wasn’t the very pricey product I was using — maybe it was me. Five minutes with the actually good Sally Hansen Haute Springs red, and I realized that was all nonsense. I am GREAT at doing my nails! The problem WASN’T me! And of course I have the pictures to prove it. The power of a great brush and a quality formula. But there was one key difference between the two — which soon became very, very clear. Here’s how this cheap polish held up after a week. Because truly, I would NOT. This is the degree of damage I’m used to seeing with my nail polish, honestly — anyone who spends most of their time typing probably knows it, too. I love Sally Hansen. I love Color Therapy. I ESPECIALLY love Haute Springs as a color. And I love that it’s $8 — because everyone deserves amazing nails! It was far and way the better polish in terms of design, use, price, value, and wear — the only thing the Rouge Louboutin did better was crush my confidence and look awesome on my vanity. If money is really no object, or you’re looking for a really intense paperweight which could (but shouldn’t) double as a murder weapon, by all means, spend $50 on the Rouge Louboutin nail polish. It is undoubtedly a lovely piece of sculpture. But if you want a nail polish that is easy to use, looks amazing after a full week, AND doesn’t cost a bananas amount of money — get yourself an $8 of Sally Hansen Color Therapy Polish in Haute Springs. I may never use a more expensive brand ever again.
