Nail Art Game Guide: All 12 Nail Art Studio Clients, Step by Step

The quickest way to three stars in a nail art game is to paint each nail with two strokes, one down each side, and then check the client’s card nail by nail before you press Done. In our own Nail Art Studio a single stroke down the middle never finished a nail, while two strokes finished every shape and length. Every slip we tried cost a star, with one exception: stickers nobody asked for are free. Below is how the game scores you, what we measured, and all twelve clients step by step.

How Nail Art Studio works

Nail Art Studio is a nail salon game for your browser. You paint the five nails of one hand and decorate them on six tabs:

• Polish: 20 colors. Drag over a nail to paint it, or tap Fill to paint the selected nail at once. All nails paints the whole hand.
• Finish: gloss, matte, glitter, chrome, French tip or ombre. The French tip and the ombre use a second color.
• Nail art: dots, stripes, zigzag, leopard, hearts, stars, checks or marble, in any of the 20 colors.
• Stickers: ten stickers and gems, up to three on each nail.
• Shape: square, round, oval, almond, stiletto or coffin, in short, medium or long.
• Hand: eight skin tones and six backgrounds.

The Clients button switches from free design to twelve short requests. A card above the tabs shows the five nails the client wants. When you press Done, the game compares your hand with the card and gives up to three stars. One star is enough to open the next client.

How the score works

We wrote the game, so these are the exact rules. Each nail earns points for:

A client who asks for a nail shape adds 2 points for it, and a client who asks for a length adds 1 more. Your score is the share of all points you earned: 95% or more gives three stars, 78% gives two and 55% gives one.

Two things follow from these rules. A half-painted nail scores like an unpainted one, because the polish only counts once the whole nail is covered. And stickers you add on your own are never counted against you.

What we measured

Two experiments shaped the tips below. The first painted a nail with straight top-to-bottom strokes on all 18 combinations of the six shapes and three lengths, and checked when the game counted the nail as painted. A nail counts as painted once 86% of it is covered, and the brush is a little more than half as wide as the nail.

The second experiment took a perfect hand for each client, made one mistake and scored it with the game’s own rules.

Every mistake except the extra sticker pushed the score below 95%, which means two stars instead of three. There was one exception among the 37 cases: client 9 still scored 96% when the gold chrome on the single accent nail was left out, because that finish is one point out of 25.

7 tips for three stars

1. Paint with two strokes, one down each side

Start at the cuticle, drag to the tip along the left half of the nail, then do the same on the right half. That finished all 18 shapes and lengths in our test. A single stroke down the middle left the edges bare every time, and a bare edge means the nail does not count yet.

2. Turn on All nails when the client wants one color

Nine of the twelve clients want the same polish on all five nails. With All nails on, a tap on a color paints the whole hand, and the Finish and Nail art tabs change every nail at once. Turn it off again before you work on a single nail, such as the accent nail of client 9.

3. Fill is not cheating

Fill paints the selected nail completely in one tap and scores exactly like careful brushwork. Use dragging when you enjoy it and Fill when you want to be sure.

4. Watch the second color on French tips and ombre

Client 5 wants a white French tip and client 7 an ombre that fades into yellow. The second color is a separate point on every nail, so a wrong tip color on all five nails costs five points even when the base is perfect.

5. Set the shape first

Five clients ask for a shape: square for clients 5 and 8, almond for client 7, long stiletto for client 10 and coffin for client 12. It is worth 2 points, plus 1 for the length on client 10. Choosing it first means you see the final nail while you paint.

6. Add the stickers that were asked for, and as many others as you like

Clients 11 and 12 each want one sticker on one particular nail: a moon on the ring finger and a heart on the thumb. The game counts stickers on the nail where the client wants them. Extra stickers anywhere else never lower the score, so decorate freely once the request is met.

7. Compare the hand with the card, thumb to pinky

The card shows the nails in the same order as the hand, from the thumb on the left to the little finger on the right. Most lost stars come from one nail, so check them one by one before you press Done.

Ready to try it? Play Nail Art Studio in your browser. It works on phones and computers, with nothing to download.

All 12 clients, step by step

“Any shape” means the client does not mind, so the default oval is fine.

Client 12 takes the most steps: five different colors, a sticker and a shape. Paint it with All nails off, one nail at a time from the thumb.

Ideas for the free studio

Without clients there is no score, and the hand has room for far more than twelve looks. Without stickers, a single nail can take 141,680 different combinations of polish, finish and pattern. Across five nails, six shapes, three lengths, eight skin tones and six backgrounds that becomes a number with 29 digits. A few starting points:

• Sunset ombre: hot pink with the ombre finish and yellow, almond shape.
• Classic French: nude with a white French tip, square and short.
• Night sky: navy with gold stars and one moon sticker.
• Accent nail: one color on four nails and gold chrome on the ring finger.

For more on picking colors that work together, see our guide to colors that go together. If you want to try a look on your real nails, our easy nail art for short nails guide turns eight of them into simple steps.

Controls on phone and computer

• Phone and tablet: tap a color, then drag your finger over a nail. Painting on the hand does not scroll the page; a swipe on the panel below it does.
• Computer: drag with the mouse, or use the keyboard. Left and right arrows choose a nail, up and down arrows change the tab, C changes the color, the space bar fills, A turns All nails on and off, R makes a random design, Z undoes and S saves a picture.
• Your work is kept: your last design and your stars stay in your browser on this device, and Save PNG downloads a picture of the hand.