Nail polish
lacquer applied to the human fingernails or toenails to decorate and protect the nail plates
Nail polish (also known as nail varnish in British English or nail enamel) is a lacquer that can be applied to the human fingernails or toenails to decorate and protect the nail plates. The formula has been revised repeatedly to enhance its decorative properties, to be safer for the consumer to use, and to suppress cracking or peeling. Nail polish consists of a mix of an organic polymer and several other components that give it colors and textures. Nail polishes come in all color shades and play a significant part in manicures and pedicures.
History
Nail polish has different origins dating back to 3000 BCE in different regions of the world. The modern nail polish concept was much influenced from painting with paint on the fingernails as well as the ongoing collective dynamic evolution process.
Nail polish has origins in China and dates back to 3000 BCE. Around 600 BCE, during the Zhou dynasty, the royal house preferred the colors gold and silver. However, red and black eventually replaced these metallic colors as royal favorites. During the Ming dynasty, nail polish was often made from a mixture that included beeswax, egg whites, gelatin, vegetable dyes, and gum arabic.
In Egypt, the lower classes painted their nails a reddish brown with henna.
“Nail polish” enters the record as lacquer applied to the human fingernails or toenails to decorate and protect the nail plates. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nail, polish and lacquer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q223807. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nail polish” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.