It’s a common problem: A nail polish looks amazing in the bottle, but when you finally apply it at home, your nails look like your dog puked on them. Happily, Sally Hansen has a solution: An iPhone app that lets you virtually try on nail polish.
“When we look at the nail environment in retail right now in the U.S., there’s no way for consumers to try nail polish on at the shelf,” Kristen D’Arcy, global digital vice president of Coty Inc., which manufacturers Sally Hansen products, told Mashable.
“What we saw that was happening was a lot of people would grab the bottles and paint the wall, paint the signage, paint directly on the nail polish they already have on, just because they really wanted to see what would the shade look like on their nail.”
Save the manis!
So Sally Hansen came up with a “handy” (we’re not sorry) solution: ManiMatch. This app uses an augmented reality approach—as in, the app scans your hand using your camera live. You can use this in a few different ways. First, if you like a color you see in a store, you can scan the barcode and your hand to “try it on”—as in, it will overlay the color onto your nails on your phone screen.
Or, if you want to get personalized recommendations, the app can just scan your hand and give color options best suited for your skin tone. Once this step is complete, you can choose one of the recommended colors to try on.
“Everyone of course has different undertones and contrasts with the colors, so it’s important to be able to try it on,” said Madeline Poole, Sally Hansen’s global color ambassador and trend expert. “You might try on a shirt. It looks amazing on a rack, but when you try it on, it washes you out, or it doesn’t bring out the color of your eyes or your hair or whatever, so it’s the same kind of concept.”
You aren’t bound just by the suggested colors, however. There are over 200 shades you can browse through and try, or you can search through specific product lines, like gel polishes. In the future, nail art tutorials will be added to the app, and you’ll be able to try on nail art, too.
Currently, if you’re struck by a color, you can buy it through ManiMatch—but only if you have an iPhone. The Android version won’t be out for a few months yet.
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Feature Image: ManiMatch
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