With the holiday season approaching, student-run nail businesses are gaining popularity as an affordable alternative to traditional nail salons.
With multiple aspiring nail artists still in high school, small businesses are now becoming more available to the teenage demographic.
“I just saw some videos on TikTok and was like, ‘Oh, I should start doing this,’” Carlmont junior Leala Corpuz said. “And because it’s something I enjoy doing, it doesn’t necessarily seem like a job.”
Nail art is not a recent trend that suddenly emerged on social media. According to the National Library of Medicine, women have been practicing nail art since approximately 5000 B.C. in both Africa and Asia, using henna to dye their fingernails.
Today, 96% of females in the U.S. have their nails done at a salon or at home, according to a 2025 study by the Benchmarking Company.
Although this number is quite high, the frequency of clients who visit the nail salon varies. This is because of the high prices of manicures today, where a gel manicure can cost anywhere between $70 and $150 or more.
With these high costs, student-run businesses have gotten the opportunity to make manicures available to their fellow high school peers.
“When I charge for nails, I try to make it a reasonable price, which is normally a quarter of the amount that other salons charge, so that it’s available for everybody, especially other teenagers like me,” Kara Lee said, a junior from Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts.
Many aspiring nail artists, like Corpuz and Lee, started their businesses by painting the nails of their close friends, but soon, their businesses expanded beyond just the friends they hung out with.
“I guess you can say it’s kind of like networking, because I do my friend’s nails, and then people ask them who does their nails, and my friends refer them to me. It’s kind of like a spiderweb,” Corpuz said.
Beyond getting clients through word of mouth, many student-run nail art businesses advertise on social media platforms like Instagram. Carlmont sophomore Jia Xu has clients both near and far.
“I can paint directly on a client’s nails, but in order to do that, it has to be in person,” Xu said. “I can also make press-on sets, and if my client is far away, then I can send them the set by mail.”
However, Xu expressed that the process is time-consuming, whether a client gets their nails painted in person or receives a set by mail.
“Painting a set can take me around three to four hours, but if the design is simple, then it takes around two hours,” Xu said.
With the lengthy process, high school students involved in the nail art industry have to be strategic when managing their time.
“It’s just mainly trying to find a balance between it all,” Lee said. “If I’m scheduling an appointment and I can’t do it during the weekend, I’ll schedule it later at night sometimes. But that’s only towards the end of the week when I am not worried about homework anymore.”
Especially with the holidays approaching, student nail artists must be prepared for an influx of clients.
“I normally get more clients from either the holidays or certain events, like homecoming,” Lee said. “So if my clients get their nails done around the time of certain holidays, like Christmas or summer vacation, they’ll center their nails around those topics.”
Corpuz also added that online trends during the summer and winter help her get business because of increased travel frequency and vacation.
Even with student-run nail businesses available to high school students, there are still a handful of students willing to pay the high prices of local nail salons to get their nails professionally done, rather than by a beginner nail artist.
Corpuz contrasts this, arguing that even if a person doesn’t start out as an artist, it doesn’t mean that they can’t learn to be one.
“Practice is really key,” Corpuz said. “And don’t doubt yourself. At first, yes, it may seem hard, but as you keep going and keep pursuing, watch tutorials, watch videos.”
