Going to the spa is a fun indulgence, but unless you’re really splurging, you simply won’t get the super-smooth, long lasting results you can get by doing it yourself. It will be hard work, and it takes a chunk of time, but the results will speak for themselves and you’ll have extra dough saved for new shoes to show off your hard work.
Your DIY pedicure will realistically take you an hour and a half to two hours with an additional hour for drying. During much of this time you will have wet feet, so make sure you have all your supplies within an arm’s reach.
This is a good project to do while you’re watching a DVD, listening to an audiobook, or catching up on DVR-ed TV shows.
Before you get down to it, get yourself something to drink, use the restroom, get everything you’ll need set up around your space, including an extra chair or table for propping your feet on, and make sure you’re going to be comfy.
Pedi Supplies
- Footbath: Use either a store-bought plug-in footbath or a large pot or dish tub—whatever’s watertight that you can fit your two feet in.
- Towels: A towel or bathmat can be used under the footbath to protect your floor; you’ll need a couple more towels for under your feet or drying.
- Bath-bomb or Foot Soak: If you are using a vibrating store-bought footbath, do not add anything that bubbles or you will have overflow issues.
- Cotton
- Nail Polish Remover: Check ingredients, some brands use gelatin, which is not vegetarian.
- Nail Trimmers or Nail Clippers
- Nail File
- Cuticle Cream
- Cuticle Pusher: An orange stick can also be used as a cuticle pusher.
- Orange Stick: These magical wooden sticks sometimes come with cotton already on one end, sometimes they come plain and you have to wrap it yourself.
- Cuticle Nippers
- Callus Rasp
- Callus File
- Exfoliating Scrub: Buy a scrub or make your own with a couple ingredients found in your pantry: Start with a base of kosher salt or sugar. Mix it with small amount of canola oil or olive oil. Add a couple drops of peppermint oil for a fresh scent.
- Nailbrush: I hate that when you go to the dentist’s office they always give you a soft bristle brush. If you don’t have a nailbrush, one of those will work—just be sure it’s somehow labeled so no one puts it in their mouth.
- Foot Lotion: If you don’t have lotion designated for feet, you can substitute other lotion as long as it’s ultra-moisturizing.
- Foam-Filled Nail Smoother
- Toe Separators
- Flip Flops
- Base Coat
- Nail Polish: Some nail polish colors are always in style: Bright Red, Hot Pink (fuchsia or magenta), Light Pink (think ballet slippers), Creamy Beige or Tan, Black. It’s a little bit of a splurge, but I only use Essie polishes—in my experience they wear the longest.
- Topcoat
- Drying Drops
Get your footbath filled with bath-temperature water. If you’re doing your pedicure indoors, use a towel or bathmat under it to avoid getting your floor soaked. Drop in a bath-bomb or foot soak.
Remove any existing nail polish with cotton soaked with nail polish remover.
Expert advice: saturate each nail with remover by first pressing the cotton over each nail then going back and rubbing the polish off—it’ll come off much more easily.
Soak your feet for a good 5-10 minutes.
Starting with one foot (the other can continue to soak), trim your toenails with nail trimmer/clippers, then shape and smooth each nail with a nail file. Bevel the ends of your nails by filing forward over the top so polish goes on smoothly.
Once your nails are all the proper shape and length, rub cuticle cream into your cuticles, and put foot back in the water to soak while you repeat this step on the other foot.
Back to the first foot, push back cuticles with cuticle pusher, use an orange stick to clean under the nails, then trim cuticles with cuticle nippers, and put foot back in the water to soak while you repeat this step on the other foot.
In order to get un-rough we’ll have to first get a little rough on ourselves. Start filing down your calluses—they’re usually on the heels and the balls of your feet—with a callus rasp. Start with the coarsest and work your way down to the finest, eventually switching from rasp to callus file.
Use exfoliating scrub for the final polish (bonus: your hands get polished too).
Rinse both feet in the tub, using the nailbrush to clean off nails and get sandy bits out of nails.
Use a towel to dry off your feet and legs and push the tub off to the side. Check nails one more time for sand or dead skin, going back through with the orange stick to clean under nails and around cuticles, making sure to take care of any “missed opportunities.”
Next, moisturize with foot lotion and give your feet and legs as much of a massage as you can. Use the soft side of foam-filled nail smoother to smooth out your nail bed so polish will better adhere. Because the lotion leaves oil on the nails, you need to prep your nails for polish by swiping nail polish remover over each nail, using more nail polish remover on cotton wrapped around the end of an orange stick to get the lotion out of the edges and crevasses of the nail bed. Dip the cotton on the orange stick in the remover again and have it nearby and ready for cleaning up polish mistakes.
If any of your toenails touch your other toes, you’ll need to use toe separators. Before putting on polish, you may want to put flip flops on so you can more easily get around while you wait for it to dry.
If you are right handed, you’ll want to polish from left to right, if you are left handed, you’ll work from right to left. Start with a good base coat. Base coat is important because it protects nail bed from dyes used in the polish that could discolor your nail bed and it will help your color to adhere better (and therefore last longer).
Apply your nail polish with very little polish on the brush. For your largest toenail, paint one stripe down the middle, then do a swipe up each side. As you paint, use your orange stick dipped in nail polish remover to clean the edges.
Expert advice: Nail polish should never go all the way to the cuticle. By pooling the polish on top of the nail, it will stay in place as your nail grows, leaving a clean edge and thereby extending the life of your pedicure.
Giving each layer of polish some time to dry does help in the end, so once you’ve given the second coat of color some time to dry, apply a topcoat. Drying drops dripped on each nail will help speed up the drying process, but regardless, leave a minimum of one hour for the polish to harden before putting on close-toed shoes, getting into bed, or doing anything else that might smudge all your hard work.
Your feet will look super chic for up to six weeks. If you do a lot of walking in sandals, you might need to do a polish change once in between pedis.
Expert advice: Occasionally applying another coat of the clear topcoat will help your polish last longer.
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