“Soap Nails” Are the Squeaky-Clean Manicure Trend to Try This Spring (2025)

Ask any manicurist or nail enthusiast and they’ll confirm that one of the most popular nail polish shades of all time is OPI’s Bubble Bath, a light, satiny, super-pale pink shade beloved everywhere from NYC's Upper East Side to Birmingham, Alabama. Bubble Bath has been an icon since 2001, but a new polish trend may be coming to take her bubbly crown: "soap nails." Move over, lip gloss nails—there’s a new beauty product-inspired mani trend in town, but you might have to squint to see it.

What Are Soap Nails?

Okay, so what are soap nails, anyway? The name calls to mind a soft white Dove or a glamorous shell pink Chanel No. 5 bar sitting in your shower, but the manicure itself is much, much subtler than even a simple bar of soap.

Manicurist Tom Bachik was one of the first to use the descriptor on his client Selena Gomez, sharing a pic of her practically bare nails with just the subtlest hint of shine. The vibe is “I just washed my hands really well, then applied some fancy hand cream"—think pristine cuticles, short nails, and almost wet-looking shine. No glitter, no microshimmer, no pink tint. Just natural nails, but a little bit better.

The big differentiator between soap nails and the whitish-pink “milk bath” nails that we’ve been seeing for years is that soap nails are either entirely bare with just a topcoat, or painted with a color that matches the wearer’s skin exactly, hence the whole “freshly scrubbed skin” angle.

Soap nails have already been trending in the celeb set, and they were all over the recent Golden Globes red carpet, including on Emma Stone, Kate Hudson, Felicity Jones, and Maya Erskine. We’ll probably be seeing plenty more of the look as awards season continues this spring.

How to Get Soap Nails

Soap nails are great for those occasions when you want your nails to look nice, but you don’t really want to wear nail polish and worry about visible chips. They’re also perfect for people who just don’t like wearing nail color, period, but still want to feel “done.”

But the soap nails look isn’t as simple as washing your hands with a bar of Ivory soap and hitting the red carpet. To make soap nails look their best, you gotta do the pre-work for the pristine-looking payoff.

“This is a look maintained by care and a good nail health regimen, not any hack or quick fix,” explains Rita Remark, editorial manicurist and Essie Global Ambassador. “Like our skin or hair, naturally beautiful, healthy nails require some TLC.” Remark recommends treating cuticles with an oil like Essie’s On a Roll Apricot Nail & Cuticle Oil throughout the day; she advises keeping a tube at your desk, in your bag, and by your bed. Then, gently push back the cuticle with an orangewood stick or use your fingertip in the shower after the skin is warm and soft, and gently trim any hangnails.

While soap nails work for a variety of lengths, most celebs are opting to go short, which adds to the very “done but not done” appeal of the look. “One thing that does in fact make this look easy to maintain is the nail length: short!” says Remark. “Short nails are always lower maintenance and to keep with the prim and tidy appeal of ‘soap nails,’ keep them filed to a rounded oval or a softened square. The idea is for it to look flawless, yet unfussed.”

Polish-wise, the subtler, the better. Remark likes Essie’s Gel Couture Fairy Tailor, Gel Couture Sheer Fantasy, and the beloved Mademoiselle. Brighten up dull nails with a rose-toned sheer, like Gel Couture Gossamer Garments, Sugar Daddy, or a nail-perfecting treatment polish like Londontown’s Perfecting Nail Veil.

Sheer polishes are “super forgiving and easy to apply,” says Remark. However, if you have ridges in your nails, the finish can look streaky, she says. “I’d recommend you apply a smoothing base coat like Essie’s Smooth-E.” Once your nails look like an ultra-minimalist masterpiece, finish with the “highest gloss topcoat you can find!” So fresh and so clean.