This Spring’s Nail Art Trends Are Anything But Mild

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Soft Arcs Nails Courtesy of MVK; Cloud Nails Courtesy of Bana Jarjour; Inky Nails Courtesy of Naeem Khan/Pattie Yankee; Getty Images: Remaining.

With mild weather and slightly longer days, spring is not typically a season of extremes. This year, it seems, manicurists didn’t get the memo, as the nail art trends they’re setting and excited about couldn’t be more different. “I’m seeing nails take a more maximalist turn for sure,” says New York City-based nail artist Julie Kandalec. “Three-D embellishments, from unique cutouts to texturized chrome, are everywhere.” She adds that while nail art has gotten more dramatic this season, you’ll still see “dainty designs in the mix.”

On the minimalist end of the spring nail art spectrum, you have teeny-tiny crystals and itty-bitty fruit designs that offer a cute, seasonally appropriate take on the micro nail art trend of the last couple of years. Aimed at more low-maintenance nail art lovers, micro designs “add a touch of style without being too bold,” says New York City-based celebrity nail artist Elle Gerstein. They also work on any length.

For those not concerned with simplicity or subtlety, spring 2025 offers loads of unexpected ideas, from colorful plaid prints and celestial designs to the all-black nail art we’ve spotted all over the spring runways and on recent red carpets. But here’s the thing: While spring’s nail art trends border on the extreme, they can also be adapted to your personal style, whether that means swapping out classic French tips for a sliver of inky black or completely covering your nails in stars, rhinestones, and charms à la Cynthia Erivo. See what we mean as you scroll through spring’s top nail art trends with expert advice on how to re-create them at home or in the salon.

Meet the experts:

• Viktoria Kolodii, is the founder of Ukrainian salon network MVK, with locations across Ukraine and Europe.

• Yarden Horowitz, is the cofounder of Spate, an AI-powered, trend-forecasting platform.

Celestial Nails

Manicurists are feeling the pull of the cosmos right now. (Maybe it’s because Mars, Venus, and Mercury are all in retrograde this year.) Designs range from simple, like a single star twinkling atop a blue gradient, to out-of-this-world, like the maximalist set nail artist Mycah Dior created for Erivo at the Grammys. “Celestial dreams meet luxury,” Dior said of her work on Instagram.

How extreme you take this trend depends on your patience, skill level, and whether or not you decide to bring it to a salon. The easiest way to try this at home is with press-ons or nail stickers. The Heyhae Hey, Dreaming Of You Sun Cured Nail Stickers capture the same vibe as Erivo’s nails without the gargantuan three-dimensional gems, while Olive & June’s You’re A Star nail stickers can be placed over regular polish. For a more ornate but still easy-to-use option, you can find “shiny star” nail stickers on Amazon that offer a variety of cosmic-inspired shapes and sizes and even starbursts studded with rhinestones.

Cloud Prints

Cloud nails are the daytime equivalent of celestial nails and evoke the lightness and brightness we typically associate with spring. They’re also incredibly simple to paint yourself as long as you have some white nail polish and a small, nail art cleaning brush lying around, says manicurist Bana Jarjour, who dreamed up the look above.

Although Jarjour notes you can paint clouds over any color, if you want to re-create this exact design start with a sheer pink polish as your base. She recommends OPI Bubble Bath if you’re using regular polish, or The Gel Bottle in Marshmallow if you’re going for gels. Then create clouds using your tapered, round-tip brush and a sheer, milky-white polish (Jarjour likes Essie Nail Polish in Marshmallow or CND Shellac Studio White for gels). “I dip the brush in the white polish and then stipple it onto the nail making sure I use more product for the top of the cloud and less product to make the round shape at the bottom,” Jarjour explains.

Inky Designs

Do you know what’s groundbreaking for spring? All-black nail art. The spring 2025 runways were full of onyx-only designs, from the inky ombré nails at Naeem Khan to the cutout stars at Christian Cowan. And while we thought this might be a fleeting Fashion Week trend, awards season is proving celebrities are also loving dark and moody nail designs too, be it Cardi B’s extra-long (and extra-sharp) French manicure at the Grammys (using OPI Nail Lacquer in Black Onyx) or Joey King’s vintage black tips at the Critics Choice Awards.

The best part of this trend is that you can adapt it to any aesthetic. Prefer something classic? Swap out the white tips of a French manicure for a dainty stripe of black. Like a little bling? Take inspiration from manicurist Ama Quashi, who added a crystal floral appliqué atop shiny black polish at Nensi Dojaka. You can go for vintage half moons, futuristic 3D gel designs, graphic stars, or soft gradients. The only requirement is a good black nail polish (we’ve tested a lot of black polishes and found that Mooncat Nail Polish in Emo For Life is next level), maybe with Bishop Briggs’s “Paint It Black” cover playing in the background to get you in the mood.

Micro Fruit and Florals

This wouldn’t be a list of spring nail art trends if florals didn’t make an appearance. “We are seeing [a resurgence of] florals and a throwback to last summer’s big ‘farmers market’ [trend]—which featured mini fruit designs on every nail—that Hailey Bieber made popular,” says Rita Pinto, founder of Vanity Projects nail art salons in New York City and Miami, who adds that cherries and strawberries are especially popular designs for spring 2025. Salons like Vanity Project and Green Nail Salon in Brooklyn have loads of cherry nail art on their Instagram accounts, while brands like Heyhae and Chillhouse offer cherry and strawberry (and watermelon!) nail stickers for sale.

Like a lot of trends on this list, you can adapt fruit and floral designs to your personal style, but we’re particularly loving the micro approach for this one. That means placing a tiny flower or fruit design on a nude, sheer pink, or milky white nail. “Floral micros are a favorite because they are so easy to create,” says Gerstein. “Then you can add caviar beads or crystals if you want to add more details.”

Micro details can range from super complicated (just take a look at nail artist Bettina Goldstein’s work) to super simple. An easy method comes courtesy of Viktoria Kolodii, founder of MVK Salons in Ukraine and across Europe. “Just take a tiny flower or a few petals and seal them with a clear polish,” she says. If you don’t have a lush backyard garden to pick from, you can find itty-bitty dried flowers on Amazon.

Spring Plaid

Winter’s festive red-and-green tartan prints are transforming into colorful plaid for spring, says Pinto. “There were a lot of plaid [nail] looks on the spring runways,” she adds. The options truly are endless: You can add a plaid print to sheer or milky-white nails, choose quintessential spring hues like pink or blue (think back to those early 2000s plaid Bermuda shorts from Old Navy and Aeropostale), or mix and match across your fingers.

If you’re going to attempt this at home, we suggest putting on a podcast and blocking out a couple of hours because you’ll need to work slowly and steadily. There are a few ways to create a plaid design, the most straightforward being hand-painting the lines using a fine-line brush (like one of the Elegance Double Sided Nail Art Brushes, which range from 5mm to 20mm in width), nail polish markers (the Saviland Nail Art Pens on Amazon come highly rated in a ton of shades), or a mix of the two. The trick to nailing the design is to paint lines of different widths and let each color dry before painting the next. Otherwise, you’ll end up with muddy smears versus crisp lines.

Low-key Sparkle

Still not ready to let the holiday spirit go? We get it. Some of us had our trees up until February. Continue to add a bit of festive bling to your nails this spring with glitter topcoats and/or layers of tiny crystals. “This season we will see more sheer glitter toppers than the full-cover sparkle that was popular for the past few months,” says Jarjour. “Choosing one that has sheerer coverage allows your spring pastels to peak from underneath while still adding a bit of sparkle.”

Jarjour’s favorite glitter topcoat at the moment is Essie Quick Dry Effect Filter in Holo FX, but you can also use chrome powder to create an even subtler effect, like manicurist Zola Ganzorigt did on Sabrina Carpenter for the Grammys. After applying one coat of the sheer pink OPI Nail Polish in Bare My Soul, Ganzorigt layered on OPI Chrome Effects Tin Man Can, finishing the look by adding two to four itty-bitty rhinestones to each nail. The size is what makes this season’s crystals different; look for ones that are 3mm or less, says Gerstein.

You can also skip the glitter topcoat altogether and go straight in with your ultra-tiny rhinestones (like the above design from MVK Salon in Kyiv), scattering them around the nail for an even more laid-back approach to spring sparkle. Gerstein’s favorite tool for picking up and placing rhinestones is the Crystal Katana. “It’s the only tool that doesn’t leak wax onto my crystals and helps me pick them up in seconds,” she says.

Soft Arcs

If you took the French manicure, flipped it, and reversed it—Missy Elliot-style—you’d have the soft-arc manicure Kolodii sees as being a big hit for those who are minimally inclined this spring. The design does require a bit of precision, though. “The right angle enhances the nail shape,” she says. “A line near the cuticle visually elongates the nail, giving the hands a more elegant look.”

If you’re doing this at home, all you need is a regular color polish (might we suggest JinSoon Nail Polish in Cool Blue or Pleasing Nail Polish in Sticky Segments) and a fine brush. “Draw a precise line, adding a bold accent along the curve of the nail,” Kolodii explains. It can also be done in a salon with gel polish. “The beauty of this design is its versatility; it works with any finish,” she says. “A matte base in milky or natural shades would be the perfect color match for it.”

Crystal Free Edges

Clear nails—as in clear fake nails—is a trend creeping back into the mix after its initial moment in 2018. They were spotted at Mugler and Christian Cowan’s spring 2025 shows, and it’s something Kandalec has been playing around with using dual forms, which are flexible, reusable fake-nail molds that professionals can use to shape and form nail extensions with polygel, a hybrid acrylic and gel product.

Creating crystal free edge nails using gel, acrylics, or polygel is like the AP level of nail art. However it can be replicated at home using clear press-ons, says Kandalec. You can decorate the clear press-on nails however you want. What’s key, though, is to leave the free edge of the fake nails without polish. To re-create the look above, paint the part of the press-on that covers your natural nail bed a semi-sheer pink (we love CND Vinylux Weekly Polish in Negligee). “This covers any nail glue bubbles,” says Kandalec. Then you can apply loose pieces of sequins to the free edge of the nail for a similar effect.

Junk Nails

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Chaotic, kitschy, and wildly creative, junk is probably the biggest nail art trend on TikTok right now. If it hasn’t been served up on your For You Page yet, junk nails are extreme, maximalist designs that feature loads of 3D elements—rhinestones, pearls, charms, builder gel, and often lots of Hello Kitty—that are often oversize and stuck onto extra-long nail forms (although, that’s not a hard requirement). And while they may not be the most practical, people are certainly fascinated by the designs, how they’re made, and how people can wash their hands with them. The term “junk nails” has seen a 106.5% increase in searches year over year, according to Spate’s Popularity Index, a proprietary algorithm that analyzes combined data from Google Search and TikTok.

“The rise of junk nails, which has surged over the past year, is a perfect example of the growing ‘tchotchkefication’ of beauty,” says Yarden Horowitz, Spate’s cofounder, noting that TikTok has become the driving force in this aesthetic shift. “From bag charms to lipstick cases to bows, consumers are leaning into small, expressive luxuries.”

There are no rules when it comes to junk nails. Three-D appliqués can be applied more stylistically and streamlined or they can be thrown together all over the nail in a slapdash manner reminiscent of a toddler’s toy box. A little inspiration is always helpful, though, and you can see all ends of the junk-nail spectrum scrolling through the work of Yulenny Garcia, nail artist and owner of Muñeca Beauty Salon in the Bronx, who creates mind-blowing manicures for designer Marc Jacobs and TikTok star Ryan James. If the charms are a little too much for your vibe, skip them. You can simply paint a different design on each nail to give a nod to the maximalist effect.

Read more about the biggest trends:

Now, watch Keke Palmer react to TikTok trends.

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