I’m going to be straight with you I have a love hate relationship with Barry M nail varnishes. I really don’t like their regular formulation of nail varnish. I find it doesn’t dry quickly, the colours stain my nails and it chips really easily.
Silverzlining time: the quick dry formulation from Barry M does none of these things and is an amazing nail varnish formulation.
So let’s start with application. The brush is flat and around a cm wide. I feel that this is to keep with the speedy nature of the nail varnish as this makes for really quick application. The brush is not very dense so there is not too much product on the nails.
The fibres of the brush stay together and I think this is one of their best brushes yet.
The colour range is very unique with 15 shades. There is a range of different shades however there are only around 5 dark or really bright shades. All the others are a muted tones or very light. This could be to do with this range launching in spring and come AW there may be other darker shades out.
The blue shade I have is called Eat my Dust, and it is a blue grey shade. When applied and dried it looks like a duller sky blue shade. Okay, that probably makes it sound really boring but I think this shade really works as it is a way to wear a blue shade without it being too striking.
The purple shade, Lap of Honour, has the same effect as again it is on the grey side of the spectrum. I really like this one as it is on the blue side of the purple scale instead of the pink side making it a very modern and mature way to wear purple nail varnish.
The rest of the colours follow the same pattern, apart from the five darker and brighter shades already mentioned, that they are a duller pastel shade.
Now on to the main selling point: speed drying power.
I will say for a gloss texture this is one of the best speed drying nail varnishes. The Barry M Silk nail varnish probably has the same drying time however that is a silk texture and the speed dry is a gloss texture.
For the first coat it drying time is nothing at all. I would say about a minute to be on the safe side you can go from wet to ready to go. However you really need two coats to make the colour any good.
This could be down to the shades that I got but the first coast is way to light to be seen and there has to be a second applied. The first coat is sheer and also patchy as it is not a thick formulation so will slide around when trying to apply.
The second coat however applies a lot more smoothly and will fill in all the gaps; this does make the nail varnish dry slower. I would recommend not doing anything for about ten unites after because it may chip or smudge.
If you were to only use a one coat and maybe on of the other lighter colours were it looks better sheer then I would say that this is a quick drying colour however I am not too convinced.
I would say that the nail varnish does last around a week without chipping too much and is about standard for any normal nail varnish.
All in all I would recommend this range from Barry M, I wold like to see more colours and an advancement on the formula to make two coats of nail varnish dry a little quicker – but that might just be me being really picky.
Nerd with a Manicure 