Tracy Reese for Sally Hansen, Forsythia

Our nail trend expert Kelly Keeton is back with advice on which yellow you should say hello to this season. 

Spring has sprung in the land of nail polish. We are seeing bright festive colors of all kinds, but yellow seems to be the order of the day for almost every collection being released this season. The yellow’s range in color from light and lemony to goldenrod. Whatever your skin tone, you are sure to find at least one yellow that will brighten your day.

Every polish in The Spring 2009 Tracy Reese for Sally Hansen collection is named after a flower.  The line includes a beautiful Dijon mustard yellow called Forsythia (see above). It has a lot of fine silvery shimmer making it a good fit for cooler skin tones.  The consistency was a bit thick and took three coats to get it even, but most yellows have this “streaky” issue. If you are looking for a unique yellow with a trusted name, Sally Hansen’s Forsythia just may be your best choice.  This gets an impressive 4 out of five bottle rating.

Lemondrops, Barielle

Lemondrops is from Barielle’s new collection called Sugar Rush. Lemondrops is a very vivid “French’s” mustard yellow crème, which borders on neon, but without the radioactive glow. The shade has a hint of orange making it a good fit for most skintones.  Since yellow is a notoriously difficult shade to apply evenly, there were some streaks at first but after three thin coats it evened out nicely and was very opaque. I highly recommend this one if you’re looking to make a bold statement this spring. I gave it a perfect 5-bottle rating.

Sephora, IM Beauty

Sephora by OPI includes a wide range of fabulous colors for spring 2009.  One of the standouts is their yellow shade named, IM Beauty. IM Beauty is a lemon chiffon yellow crème which is pale, soothing, and extremely flattering to cooler skin tones. Like the other shades in this post, I had streaky issues so three coats were needed for smooth finish. In general, Sephora by OPI’s polishes are really great and have nice staying power, so if a more subtle yellow is what you had in mind, then IM Beauty could be the perfect pick for spring! I give this shade 3 bottles.