Protecting your hands is essential if you are a nail technician. It wouldn’t look very good if you were to aim for perfect nails with your clients, yet you have poor looking hands yourself! Also, if you do not clean your hands regularly then it could produce serious hygiene problems!
In order to protect both yourself and your clients, you need to use a specialised product to clean your hands. Proper sanitation will go a long way, but you also need to avoid certain products as they could easily irritate the skin. For example, you should never use disinfectant or sterilisation products to clean the skin as these can be corrosive and they can really damage your hands. By using sanitation it will destroy all germs but it will also keep the hands protected at the same time.
Sanitation for Clients
As well as keeping your own hands clean, you also need to ensure that your client’s hands are properly sanitised. Ensure that when they wash their hands with soap and water, they avoid their nails. This is because our nails absorb up to ten times more water than our skin. If you get soapy water onto them then they will absorb the water and soap residue will be left on the nail plate. This could really dry out the nails as well as create other problems. Instead it would be a good idea to avoid soapy water altogether and get them to use a proper hand sanitation product.
Sanitation for the Technician
As a nail technician it is important to sanitise your hands both before and after each treatment. This will eliminate all risk of spreading germs as well as ridding the hands of any artificial nail products and dust.
The main thing to remember is that both you and your clients will need to sanitise your hands regularly. It would be a good idea to place a hand sanitizer product on your desk so that you and your client can use it before the treatment. That way your client will rest easier that the treatment will be hygienic.
Overall using a good specialised sanitizer is definitely a good idea. It eliminates the problems that soapy water can create and it also helps you to work more efficiently too. Usually you do not wash the sanitizer product off the skin. You simply rub it into the hands and then use a paper towel to dab on the hands to remove any excess product and debris. However, to stop the product from building up you should wash your hands throughout the course of the day to remove this excess product and to moisturise your hands.
As well as keeping your own hands clean, you also need to ensure that your client’s hands are properly sanitised. Ensure that when they wash their hands with soap and water, they avoid their nails. This is because our nails absorb up to ten times more water than our skin. If you get soapy water onto them then they will absorb the water and soap residue will be left on the nail plate. This could really dry out the nails as well as create other problems. Instead it would be a good idea to avoid soapy water altogether and get them to use a proper hand sanitation product. 
