What is Breathable and Water Permeable Nail Polish?
Breathable and water permeable nail polish is a new term to many. For those who haven’t heard of it before, it may be confusing to understand what it means and how it differs to standard nail polish. In this article, we will explain exactly what it is and help clear it up for you.
Breathable nail polish and water permeable nail polish are terms used to help identify a nail polish formula that allows oxygen and water to transfer from one side of a nail polish film to another. This means that if you had a film of breathable and water permeable nail polish on your nails, oxygen and water would be able to permeate the nail polish coating to reach your natural nail surface, hence the term ‘breathable’.
Even with the breathable benefit, our nail polish formula is still durable, only requires two coats, and has a salon quality finish - so you get the added benefit of breathability without compromising on quality.
If you’re interested in understanding it at a more technical level, we have outlined how our nail polish formula has been tested to demonstrate its level of oxygen and water permeability.
When testing the oxygen and water permeability of our nail polish film, an experiment was carried out according to the ASTM D 3985 and ISO 15105-2 standards. These were the steps taken to test it:
- A nail polish film sample was first placed inside a diffusion chamber, separating the two halves of the chamber.
- Following that, oxygen flowed into the top of the chamber and an oxygen free carrier gas flowed into the other half (on the other side of the film).
- Oxygen molecules started to travel through the film and bind to the carrier gas. At this point, the concentration of the combined gases was measured.
Measurements were calculated using the Oxygen Transmission Rate (OTR). The OTR measures how much oxygen can move through a certain film area per day. The measures of different films were then tested and calculated. Below are typical values established in industry for permeable films. They are:
- Very permeable films 25,000-100,000 cm3/m2/day.um
- Permeable films 10,000 cm3/m2/day.um
- Impermeable films 10-100 cm3/m2/day.um
Our formula has test results of 69,700 cm3/m2/day.um, classifying the nail polish film as very permeable.
We hope this article has helped clarify this for you. We welcome you to explore our range of breathable and water permeable nail polishes by clicking here.