The festive season is here and there's no better time to push our creative boundaries when it comes to nail art than now. Regardless of your nail art skill set, we've included an option for everyone. For beginners [1] and those without much time or patience, there's a simple manicure with just red or green tips, or sheer nails with festive polka dots. For these, all you'll need is your festive nail polish shades and maybe a small brush and dotting tool (which, if you don't have, you can use a toothpick or bobby pin).
But for those who want to head to the salon and have their nails done, or who have the patience and steady hand to paint tiny little elves or menorahs on their nails, well, we've got those, too. Just be prepared, you're probably going to need an arsenal of tools to achieve them.
Ahead, get a closer look at all of our favourite festive nail art designs to take inspiration from.
— Additional reporting by Tori Crowther
Green Foil Christmas Trees
This design requires one specific thing: nail art foil. It's not super pricy but can definitely take a few tries to get it down to a fine art. If you've got time on your hands this festive season, it's worth every effort.
Tortoiseshell
This is proof that you can make any current nail art trend festive and we can't get enough of this festive tortoiseshell design.
Festive Swirls
These metallic festive swirls are definitely one to take as inspiration to the salon.
Teeny Gingerbread Men
It's practically impossible not to fall in love with these teeny tiny gingerbread men and candy canes.
Neutral Gradient
If you prefer a really minimal manicure, we love this nude nail gradient set.
Festive Wreath
Get your toothpicks out for this minimal wreath design.
Red Squiggle Design
This red squiggle french manicure is incredibly festive without screaming Christmas.
Green and Gold French
These green and gold shades together are stunning. We adore the teeny star accent detailing, too. If you're feeling creative, all you need is a nail art brush and steady hand to try this at home.
Gingerbread Men Nail Art
Here's another example of a manicure that feels incredibly festive, just without using the traditional reds, greens, golds, and silvers. In terms of doing this at home though, we wouldn't even know where to start with all of these little details.
Elf Accent Nails
This elf accent nail gives us major festive vibes without being too in your face — but again, the level of detail is probably best left to the pros.
Santa's Village Nail Art
Unless you have some seriously steady hands, these itty bitty reindeer and delicately-crafted snowflakes will be a beast to paint on your own, which is why we can't wait to show this inspiration image to our favourite nail tech.
Black-and-White Christmas Nail Art
Matte black and white aren't your traditional festive colours, but with the addition of snowflakes, stars, and one adorable Santa pup, this detailed nail art feels just winter and Christmas-y enough.
Dainty Wreath Nail Art
How cute are these dainty little wreaths? While we can't imagine pulling off this level of detail at home, if you want to attempt it, the trick is to get a dual-ended dotting tool, tiny detailing brushes, and two different shades of green nail polish (in addition to white, red, and gold).
Festive Marbleised Nail Art
We love this festive spin on the classic marbleised design, which we applaud you if you can do on yourself!
Sheer Snowflake Nail Art
We're not going to lie, this intricate snowflake design — complete with tiny abstract birds — is probably best left to a professional. Although, there's no shortage of snowflake nail art decals on Etsy [2] if you want to try a version of this on your own.
Christmas Everything Nail Art
Another tartan design, jut with more intricate lines. We love pairing the design with gold and holographic red polish.
Hot Chocolate Festive Nail Art
At first glance, this design may look complicated, but it's actually one of the simplest on here — there's just a lot of steps. You'll need three polishes: a chocolate brown, a rose gold glitter, and a creamy latte colour, the latter of which you'll paint on your ring finger. Let the latte shade dry, then use a striping brush to draw four lines of the glitter polish from your cuticles to the middle of your nail, varying the lengths of them so two are are short and two are longer. Then, you'll add flat black pearls and star-shaped decals to the end of the four lines. To do that, you'll want to pick them up with a pair of tweezers, dip them in clear polish or topcoat, and adhere them to the nail.
Candy Cane Nail Art
At first, we thought trying to paint these tiny candy canes would be an impossible feat. But look at this design closely and you'll see that the candy canes are actually made up of alternating red and white dots, which mens all you need is a tiny dotting tool to recreate this look at home.
Twinkly Festive Nail Art
Another set of gels by Michelle Humphrey (this time for Dua Lipa), you can try it at home with glitter polish painted along the tips, and star nail decals, all of which needs to be locked in with a high-shine topcoat.
Squiggly Christmas Tips
Nail artist Michelle Humphrey created this incredible festive design for Lily Allen [3]. And while we're not saying it's going to be easy, it is possible to do with a striping brush and really opaque, metallic nail polishes.
Penguin Accent Nail
This little penguin is so adorable, we don't mind if takes an entire hour to try and recreate the design. Begin with your black polish, using a striping brush to paint it in a half-moon shape along the cuticle and then in thin lines along either side of your nail. Let that dry and fill in the negative space with your white polish. Once that's dry, you'll want to use a dotting tool to add the eyes, beak, and itty bitty feet.
Icy Glitter Nail Art
These sparkly tips are gels, but you can DIY [4] at home with glitter silver polish, silver striping tape, and a really glossy topcoat.
Wintery Hanukkah Nail Art
This Hanukkah-coloured manicure is fairly straight forward — blue polish on your pinky, ring finger, and thumb, and on the outer left side of your ring finger and the right side of your middle finger. Gold polish then goes on the right side of your ringer finger and the left side of your middle finger. Then, comes the tricky part, which is painting half a snowflake. As with the other designs, a tiny detailing brush or striping brush will be integral to painting on those tiny, intricate lines.
Christmas Lights Nail Art
Obviously, the hardest part about this look is the teensy-tiny strand of lights on the ring finger. Again, a striping brush will be the best way to try this at home, and you can start by painting the black loop across your nail. Let that dry fully, and then it's time to tackle the microscopic Christmas lights — a very very tiny detailing brush [5], or even a toothpick. Add the colours first, then use add the tiniest speck of white polish inside the lights to make them look like they're glowing.
Confetti Glitter Festive Nail Art
Piling on loads of chunky gold and silver glitter — with a few black stars thrown on for good measure — is a great way to add lots of festive-looking shine without having to worry too much about creating an intricate, perfect-looking design.
Candy Cane Accent Nail
What makes this a medium-level design is just how tricky it can be to paint neat diagonal stripes across your nails, even with a striping brush handy.
Hanukkah Nail Art
Blue, gold, silver, and white polishes are needed to recreate these various Hanukkah-inspired nail art designs. A striping brush will make it possible to paint tiny menorahs and Star of Davids onto your nails, whilst a dotting tool will come in handy for the blue-and-white spotted pattern.
Christmas Ribbon Nail Art
You'll need white, red, and sparkly gold polishes to achieve this ribbon-like design. Start with the white, painting a thick horizontal stripe in a diagonal line across the middle of your nails (you may need to do two coats to get it nice and opaque). Let that dry, then use a striping brush to paint a red swoop in the middle of the white polish, almost like a collapsed Nike sign. Finally, once you've cleaned off all the red polish from your striping brush, dip it into the gold polish and use it to frame the white polish, making the lines slightly wavy to make it look like a piece of ribbon.
Christmas Jewels
This manicure combines our favourite drag marble technique to create the tree and ombré for the snowflake effect. We adore it!
Mini Christmas Village
You need to be practically Picasso to recreate this snowy village scene.
Christmas Glitter Sandwich
For this design, all you need is glitter, glitter, and more glitter.
Santa Hat Tips
French tips but make it Santa-inspired!
Christmas Lights
Grab your black, red, blue, and yellow polishes and a small nail art brush to give this Christmas lights design a try.
Santa's Glitter Beard
We've never met a Santa more friendly than this one. Get down to your local salon to give this design a go.
Jewelled Wreath
There's no manicure more festive than this one, which is exactly why we adore it.
The Grinch
Mind-bogglingly intricate, this is definitely a design best left to your nail tech.