These Holiday Nail Art Trends Are All About Maximalism
This season’s nails are loud, proud, bright, and shiny.
Soap, milk, clean girl, quiet luxury. After a year full of minimalist nail designs and colors, all signs point to a full pendulum swing: This holiday season’s nail art trends are loud, proud, bright, shiny, and spotted. You’d be hard-pressed to find a “barely there” in the bunch.
Fall runways featured flashy, reimagined animal prints. It took one innocent selfie from Hailey Bieber—the harbinger of many nail trends—to make polka-dot nails explode in popularity. And suddenly our feeds were filled with edgy, 3D takes on silver molten metal. If you’re ready for your nail art to be less whisper, more shout, these winter nail art trends are a perfect, bold antidote to the neutrals and nudes that dominated much of 2025. Below, experts break down what their clients are asking for and what they expect to see trending this season.
Meet the experts
- Elle Gerstein is a New York City-based nail artist.
- Thea Green is the founder of the London-based brand Nails Inc.
- Juanita Huber-Millet is the founder and creative director of Townhouse salons across the UK, and in New York City and Los Angeles.
- Miss Pop is a New York City-based nail artist.
Polka dots
If bare nails are like chamomile tea and sculptural, 3D nails are the quad latte of nail art, polka dots are like a half-caff—a low-commitment pick-me-up. If you’re just coming out of your natural nail daze, a good entry-level design like coquettish dots is the perfect first holiday mani.
But just because the design is simple doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Try a gradient Ben Day pattern (like the dots you see in comic-book illustrations or a Lichtenstein painting), create a black-and-white French manicure with dots just on the tips, à la Dua Lipa, or paint a Milky Way constellation of alternating sizes across the center. And of course, glazed pink nails with evenly-spaced white spots—like Hailey Bieber or Sabrina Carpenter—are a reliable go-to.
You’ll need a steady hand and the right tools to nail this trend, says Juanita Huber-Millet, founder and creative director of Townhouse salons. Otherwise, the spots will look amorphous, like a middle school art project done freehand. “Our nail artists work with dotting tools to ensure every detail is perfectly placed,” she explains. “It’s that precision and polish that elevate the look from playful to truly fashion-forward.”
A set like OMG Professional Dotting Tools offers multiple dotting tips so you can create different looks. Use a larger, rounded tip for Minnie Mouse spots (see Sydney Sweeney’s inverted white-and-red polka-dot manicure; OPI Big Apple Red was practically made for this throwback combo) or a teeny pointed tip for delicate French hosiery dots . For a brighter vibe, Nails Inc. founder Thea Green recommends tiny green dots over hot pink.
Velvet French manicure
A classic French is fine and good for the holidays, but with all the emphasis on maximalism this season, it could use a few extra ingredients. A velvet French is like an eggnog, but with a dash of peppermint flavor for intrigue. You still get the sleek silhouette of French tips, but the cool dimension of magnetic polish. “It’s fashionable without [being] overpowering,” says Los Angeles-based nail artist Sarah Chue.
You could go the sleek and simple route: a regular white-tipped French with an all-over velvet sheen as the base. It’s a versatile look, and any length or shape will work because the finish is what makes the impact.
Or you could mix it up. Get creative with a color—or five!—or pull the cat-eye dimension on just the tips so it’s really only a French manicure at certain angles. “To achieve this, you would use a rectangle magnet,” says Chue. “Hold the magnet upright and start from the cuticle of the nail and gently and slowly drag the magnet down towards the tip of the nail, revealing the French curve.”
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Surrealist animal print
If Salvador Dalí were alive today and forayed into a side hustle as a nail tech, his clients wouldn’t end up with just a standard leopard print. Purple crocodiles, holographic blue zebras, and butterflies with gold-tipped pink wings—now that’s the stuff of a true surrealist’s dream.
We’re expecting a zoo’s worth of animal prints in unexpected colors, like the golden zebra stripes New York City-based manicurist Miss Pop painted onto press-ons. “I love re-creating the print and taking it to the next dimension by playing with textured, tactile spots or giving the illusion of the way fur glistens in the light,” she says.
More intricate designs are better left to the seasoned pros or press-ons, but crocodile scales are fairly straightforward. Start with a base color of your choice, then paint on a blooming gel, which “allows drops of [gel polish color] to move without them connecting,” says New York-based manicurist Elle Gerstein.
Then place drops of your crocodile-scale color and watch them “bloom.” You may want a nail-dotting tool to guide them into uniform squoval shapes, but keep in mind: “This can only be done with gel and not lacquer,” says Gerstein. A UV light is what will freeze those drops of concentrated color into place.
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Marbled
Another handy use for that blooming gel? The marbled stone nails we’re seeing everywhere on our Instagram feeds are thanks to nail artists like Gerstein and Naomi Yasuda.
Choose a base color, then two or three complementary colors to swirl on top of a coat of blooming gel. For a subtler set, start with a sheer neutral, top with blooming gel, and use a dotting tool to swirl on shades of espresso and chestnut to give it that cracked-stone dimension.
If realistic marble sounds too buttoned-up for your taste, reach for varying shades of wintery blues or even swirls of hot pink and orange. The key pieces are: blooming gel to keep those colors separated and lines of white to help create realistic variation in the “stone.”
Chunky knit
The weather outside is frightful, and what better way to stave off the cold than an homage to your coziest sweater? Whether you prefer a hardy fisherman knit, delicate embroidery on cashmere, or classic patterns, a sprinkling of acrylic powder is just as good as a pair of knitting needles.
Gerstein especially loves the combo of glossy and matte to emphasize texture. “It creates the fun fabric look that we’re seeing on the runways and gives your polish some versatility,” she says.
Start with a glossy gel base and cure it with a UV light. Then use the same color to paint on your knitted design. Sprinkle a clear acrylic powder on top, cure again, and brush the excess powder away. You’ll be left with a monochromatic knit effect that rivals your favorite cardigan.
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