UPDATED: Putting it to the test (quick edition): Zoya Remove+ vs. Homemade polish remover

Hello everyone!

Just a quick post to let you know about the preliminary findings of my even faux-er faux experiment on Zoya Remove+ vs. Loodie Loodie Loodie's Homemade Polish Remover idea. [Update: Another great link on this process is Wacki Laki's, so have a look at that one, too. :) ]

First, let me give you the exact recipe I used:

10oz (295mL) of pure acetone
2 1/4 tablespoons of pure glycerine
Splash of water

(1) In a bottle with a screw-top (I used an old recycled polish remover bottle), add your glycerine. Next, add a splash of water--it doesn't take much. Replace the top on your bottle and shake the mixture. If it mixes completely, move on to the next step. If it doesn't, add a titch more water and try again. Repeat as needed until the glycerin is completely mixed into the water. It shouldn't take much water to do this, and you don't want to use any more water than you have to, because it will just make the acetone less effective.

(2) Add your acetone, and shake until the mixture is fully mixed.

And that, my friends, is it. If you're wondering why you mix the glycerin with the water first, well, according to Loodie's recipe, you don't have to do that if you don't want to. My friend Aleksandra found it to be easier this way, so I figured, I like easy! Either way, the reason you need any water at all is that glycerin won't mix with acetone unless it's dissolved into water first (Loodie says more about this in her post).

How did it work? Again, this is a very fast test I did to get results out to you quickly. I used each remover to take off the polish from two nails of regular shimmer polish, and two nails of glitter polish. This time I made choices that favored the Zoya--e.g., I used Zoya on my pinkie nails and left the bigger nails for the homemade.

In terms of removal speed, I couldn't tell any difference at all. It also didn't take any more swooshes of the homemade to get the polish off.

In terms of cuticle care, I didn't have to scrub any harder, and the homemade remover didn't turn my cuticles white or anything like that, which you get when you use straight pure acetone. However, I can't tell long-term if there will be more cumulative damage with the homemade than the Zoya; I'll have to wait and use it for a time before I can make that decision. But what I can say for the moment is that when I use a drugstore polish remover vs. the Zoya Remove+, I can tell a difference immediately. I couldn't tell any difference between Zoya and the homemade.

Additional factors: One thing I did notice is that when you run your finger over the Zoya nails, it's perfectly slick (the same thing when you use pure acetone), but with the homemade it isn't quite as perfectly slick. HOWEVER. I was warned that if you use a mix that contains too much glycerin, you might get a bit of that, and it just means that you can use a little less glycerin. So, next time I will only use 2 tablespoons rather than 2 1/4.

Another factor here is that the homemade is clear and smells like mild acetone, while the Zoya is a lavender color and smells...well...like foofy acetone, truth be told. Whether that is a plus or minus depends on personal taste--for me, I really couldn't care less (::high-fives Purple Rain, she knows why::).

Price involved: Let's take a look at how much it costs to make 32oz of homemade remover according to this recipe. The 32oz bottle of Zoya Remove+ costs $25.00.

The price of a 6oz bottle of Glycerin at my CVS was $6 ($5.97) 1tbsp = 0.5 US oz, so this comes out to $0.50 per oz.

I have heard reports that most people can get 1 Gallon of Acetone for about $5 at Walmart; I think I paid about twice that, so I'm going to go with $10, just to be as fair as possible for the comparison to Zoya.  One gallon = 128oz = approximately 8 cents per oz ($0.08).

I used 10oz of acetone and about 1.12 oz of glycerin for my bottle. To make 32oz of finished remover would take approximately 30 oz or acetone and 2.25 oz of glycerine (this will end up with a tiny bit over the 32oz Zoya equivalent, to get the same blend I used today). That adds up to:

32 x $0.08 = $2.56 in acetone
2.25 x $0.50 = $1.13 in glycerin

Total: $3.69 for a 32oz bottle vs. $25 for Zoya Remove+. And, that's with my more expensive acetone; in places where you can get it for the cheaper price, it will be under $2.50 for a 32oz bottle. Clearly, this is an impressive savings; this is even cheaper than the drugstore polish remover. And, if you're in a place where you can't get Zoya products, this is an excellent, excellent option.

Where do you find acetone and glycerin? Apparently Walmart carries both, and any drugstore should carry glycerine. I was told I could find glycerin in the pharmacy section, so you can look there, but in my CVS, they had this with the hand lotions (and it says 'skin protectant' in small letters under the title), so this is another place they might have it if you can't find it. In fact...my CVS is having a sale this week (should be nation-wide) on 'skin care products' which includes the glycerin--not only were the bottles of glycerin on sale for 2 for $10, BUT if you buy $12 worth of 'skin care products' you get $4 back, AND there is a coupon in the magic red machine for $4 off of $10 worth of 'skin care products'. So, I got 3 bottles of glycerin (6 oz each) for $7 ($15-$4 coupon-$4 back), or $2.34 each. Since I was fairly confident this would work (I trust mah peeps) I went ahead and got three bottles--as you can imagine, I run through a lot of remover! If you don't want to make quite that level of commitment, you can still get 2 bottles for $6, or $3 each ($10 - $4 coupon). That will drop the price of your remover even more.

You can also get acetone in any hardware or general home repair store (like Lowe's or Home Depot).

One last comment. Aleksandra mentioned to me that she likes to put lemon oil in her version because it helps whiten her nails, and you can also put other oils like sweet almond oil to make it even more moisturizing. If you put in oils, put it in before you add your acetone, and shake before each use, as the oils will separate. I imagine these also make the remover smell good, too!

Okay, so that started off as a 'quick' post that got really long, lol. I think I covered everything--let me know if you have any questions!

Hugs and love,
M.

Putting it to the test: Zoya Remove+ vs. drugstore polish remover

Hello there!

Last night the lovely Nathalie asked me some questions about Zoya Remove+, and the relative benefits of it over standard polish remover, particularly with respect to cost. Since yesterday just so happens to be one of those days where I was actually wearing the same polish on both hands, applied at the same time, with no special nail art or glitters (can you tell I had some work appointments, lol?), the timing was perfect for me to do some testing on this for her and for you. 

I buy Zoya Remove+ because it treats my cuticles and nails more gently than other brands; up until now, that was the only real reason  I had for preferring it, and I had certainly never done any sort of controlled test on it. Frankly, I assumed it was costing me more to use it; but since I change my polish at least daily on average, and I struggle to keep my cuticles looking blog-level professional, that's worth the money to me right there, and I didn't need to know more. But, especially if you don't change your polish as often as I do, those other factors are important, and as a research psychologist, I love me some experiments! So, I'm going to test out the following hypotheses regarding Zoya Remove+ and CVS's house brand polish remover: 

(1) Does Zoya really cost more? On the face of it, it does, but do you use less of it than the drugstore brand? If so, maybe it really doesn't cost that much more. Let's start by assuming it does cost more.

(2) Does Zoya do the job more effectively than other polish removers? Is it faster? Do you have to scrub less? Let's start assuming it is no faster than the drugstore polish, and that you have to scrub just as much.

Participants

Here is what I'm comparing:

Zoya Remove+ vs. CVS Stengthening Polish Remover (contains acetone)

Zoya Remove+: if you buy the 32oz bottle shown here, you are paying $25, which = $0.78 per ounce

CVS Strengthening Polish Remover: if you buy 8 ounce bottle you pay $1.99, which = $0.25 per ounce

(Note: I'm going with the price I found reported online for the CVS, because it's a bit cheaper than here in Northern California where things tend to be a little bit more expensive for some reason. The bottle I purchased is10oz, and it sells for $2.50, a little more than the online report. I'm going with the cheaper estimate to favor CVS, to be as fair to that brand as possible (conservative hypothesis testing, lol). 10oz is the largest bottle my CVS sells, but it's possible there is a more economic size that I can't find. Also, I am not including shipping cost on the Zoya because it's pretty easy to get this with free shipping depending on sales and the like, and you can also buy this at retailers like Ulta to avoid the shipping cost).

So, using these estimates, the Zoya is approximately 3 times more expensive than the CVS brand, out of the gate as our baseline measure.


Methods
To test out our hypotheses, I removed the same nail polish from both hands, using CVS on my right hand and Zoya on my left. Since I'm left-handed, any advantage I have using my dominant hand should favor CVS. Also, while the nails on my hands are approximately the same length right now, if there is a slightly larger amount of nail length, it's on my left hand, so again this should give the advantage to CVS.

I used standard make-up remover pads purchased at Costco for the removal:

Standard make-up removal pads purchased at Costco

On both hands I started with an average manicure; one layer of basecoat (Poshe), two layers of polish (a-England Briarwood--a stunning polish I will show you soon :) ), and one layer of topcoat (Seche Vite). Both hands had only minimal tip-wear and no chips; here is a before shot:

Before nails--not to be used as representative swatch!!

To remove the polish, I took the pad and placed it on top of the bottle of polish. I quickly turned the bottle upside-down to get remover onto the pad, and in one motion (without pausing) turned it right-side back up--I will refer to this by the highly scientific name of a 'swoosh of remover'. I rubbed the swoosh of remover over my nails until no more polish was coming off of the nail, and then I swooshed again. I continued this way until all the polish was gone to casual visual inspection:

After shot--EEEKKK! Nekkid nails!!

Results
So what did I find?

Number of swooshes. In the case of the CVS remover, I needed 3 swooshes of remover to get all of the polish on my hand. In the case of the Zoya remover, I only needed 1 swoosh of remover.

Time of removal. In the case of the CVS remover, it took me just under 2 minutes to remove all of the polish from my hand. With the Zoya remover, I was done in less than 1 minute.

Additional factors. With the CVS remover, when I did a closer visual inspection (the sort I have to do when I am going to swatch for the camera, which picks up things not normally noticeable), there were several small spots of polish along the cuticle line that I didn't see at my first casual visual inspection, and that I needed to go back and scrub further to remove (this is after the 2 minutes initial removal reported above). This required harder scrubbing directly at the cuticle line. In the case of the Zoya remover, there was only one tiny spot, and it came off easily, with a quick swipe. I mention this separately since it might not be as important to people who are not nail bloggers and don't have to be as crazy careful about what's left behind.


Conclusions
Both of the initial hypotheses ( (1) that the Zoya remover costs more and (2) is not any more efficient to use) did not hold up to the testing. While Zoya costs about 3 times as much per ounce as the drugstore brand, it took 3 times more of the drugstore brand to do the same job; this means the actual cost of one standard manicure removal is effectively the same with both brands. Further, the Zoya Remove+ took the polish off twice as fast, and left behind less residual polish at careful inspection; it therefore required less abrasive scrubbing to remove the polish, and would result in less damage to the cuticles. This fact alone might be responsible for the improved condition of my cuticles when I use Zoya, without factoring in the added conditioning ingredients contained in the Zoya remover.


General Discussion
I favored Zoya Remove+ to start with because it left my cuticles in better condition; I was willing to pay more for a product that did that because of how often I change my polish. After seeing these tests, however, I now know that it actually doesn't cost me more to use Zoya Remove+, because it takes 1/3 of the product to do the same job. On top of that, the polish is actually faster, and does a more thorough job with less targeted scrubbing. So from where I'm standing, Zoya Remove+ is the clear winner, and I'm glad I did this, because I can have a clear conscience about the cost!

Thanks so much Nathalie for asking me about this! <3 And thanks to everyone for reading; I hope this was helpful.

Hugs and wishes of easy polish removal,
M.

(All products contained in this review were purchased with my own money.)