23 Scarily Easy Halloween Nail-Art Ideas

Try an autumnal shade of burgundy instead of blood red for your spooky nails this year. Use the trending almond shape for a subtle French manicure and add bookend block colour. Accent your ring finger with chic blood splats that will be perfect for those wanting to embrace Halloween in the most stylish of ways.

A real trick or treat style, the pale pink base makes for a feminine touch. A heart stencil at the tips surrounded by delicate white cobweb lines is the ideal nod to spooky season.

Take inspiration from comic book trends and use Vampire fangs as the focus of this nail art. Using black, white, red, and neutral colours, the white tips surrounded by red drips gives the perfect bleeding effect. A defined black outline adds to the cartoon feel, too.

This night scene manicure is the perfect way to participate in some spooky season festivities without going full-on with the theme. Grab a sheer pink shade, black, white, nail art brush, and dotting tool. After painting your base, create a swirled off-centre tip using either the polish paint brush or a thin lining brush. Once that has dried, using a brush and dotting tool, add dots, starts and tiny moon shapes in the opposite colour to your base.

Start with a black base coat, grab your dotting tool, and using a white polish, create the whites of the eyes. Let dry, and do the same with a black polish inside the white; make sure the black dots are smaller than the white. To finish, paint over the entire design with a matte topcoat (£5).

Feeling like a bit of a challenge? Give this red Halloween-themed french manicure a whirl. You'll need a sheer pink base shade, red shade, thin nail brush, and a dotting tool if you have one. Now all that requires is some patience to trace each design on. If you need extra help, there are plenty of step-by-step tutorials to help — especially the fire design.

If you're got a steady hand, you've got to try this intricate spiderweb design. Grab some stiletto false nails and paint a few coats of black polish to create your base. Next, take a thin brush and white polish and carefully draw this web design on the tip of the nail.

This is a great Halloween twist on a traditional french mani. Paint a clear or light-neutral base coat, then follow by painting on the orange tips. Using a toothpick or small brush, paint on the lined detail. This mani doesn't have to be perfect because the stitching is supposed to look roughly drawn.

This design is definitely a messy one, but it's also absolutely the most fun. Paint a white base coat and wait for it to dry completely. Then, get a straw and cut in half; put some red nail polish on a paint palette, tin foil, or jar lid; cover the tip of one straw end with the polish, aim towards the nail, and blow into the straw. You'll get a messy blood-splatter effect. Depending on where your polish splattered, you might want to clean up your cuticles a little. Whatever you do, just don't suck nail polish up the straw.

Using the same technique as the candy-corn nail design, paint a neutral base and then lightly dab layers of red over the top of it, sealing off with a topcoat.

This simple polka-dot mani is great for getting into the Halloween colour theme. Paint a base colour of your choice, then use a dotting tool or the end of a pen (get creative with your tools) to dot on your other Halloween-esque shades.

Another ombré! Using a nail polish with a texture gives an alternative finish to a simple ombré, perfect to be worn in the day if you don't want to scare your colleagues with bloody nails.

This is possibly the cutest Halloween nail design we've seen yet. First, start off with a base of your choice; we love the pumpkin hue in these photos. Then, carefully paint on the ghost's body in white polish using a small paint brush (don't worry about being too perfect), and once it's fully dried, add the eye and mouth details using a nail dotting tool or a toothpick.

For another stylish and simple design, start off with a red base coat and sponge on the black. To add more detail to this design, you can add small gems or spooky nail stickers.

Candy corn is definitely an American Halloween tradition that us Brits have jumped on, and although it is hard to buy here in the UK, it makes great nail art. This technique is called ombré and almost always starts off with a white base coat. Once your white base is dry, paint the white, orange, and yellow polishes side by side on a makeup sponge and lightly sponge onto the nail; you may need to do this two or three times to get coverage (and be sure to wait until each layer is dry before going in with another). Don't forget the topcoat to seal the design in.

Try out this cartooned ghost mani — who knew ghosts could be so adorable? Using a white or cream base coat, dot on the black eye, and using a small brush or toothpick, create the triangle shapes. Patience is key with this one.

This is an easy-peasy, ultrascary, and definitely grim manicure. All this requires is an unsteady hand and love of special effects (SFX) gore. We recommend using SFX blood in a few different shades and roughly dabbing it onto the nail and the cuticles. Continue building up the layers until you have your desired bloody effect.

Another fun Halloween manicure involves literally putting your fingerprints onto your nails. Paint a white base coat, paint red polish directly onto your finger, dab onto some paper to get the excess polish off, and transfer the polish from your finger onto the white nail polish. Seal with a topcoat and you have a crime scene on your hands. If you want to step it up a level, add blood splatter effects over the top of the fingerprints like this artist did.

Paint a black base coat, leave to dry, and then add a sparkly polish. Using your tool of choice, add a mix of dots, stars, and a moon. These less-scary nails are great for the weeks leading up to Halloween and can be worn in the day without getting horrified looks for your deceptively bloody nails.

For this manicure, you'll need a white, black, and matte top-coat nail polish, plus a mini sponge (just cut one up if you don't have any small ones on hand). Start by painting on a rough circle using a small paint brush, then dab on white polish and go in with the black shade to create this full-moon effect. To finish, paint over the entire design (once it's completely dry) with a matte top coat.

For another matte design, grab your black, white, and matte polishes again. You'll need a fine paint brush (or a nail dotting tool) to carefully paint the eyes, nose, and mouth detail. If you're nervous, start by using a small amount of paint on the brush and build up the colour once you have a rough outline.

These lightning-bolt nails are subtly spooky — and we adore them! You'll need a black, neon green, and a slightly deeper green shade of nail polish. Start by painting a black base, and once that's dry, dab on the deeper green hue in a rough lightning bolt shade. Once that layer is dry, use a fine paint brush to go over the dark green sponged areas in your neon green shade. To give it extra definition, you can use a teeny amount of white nail polish to really make the bolts stand out.

We saved the best (or worst) for last. These are the ultimate zombie nails to scare anyone who catches a glimpse of them. This takes a bit more work than the others, but is still easier than it looks. You'll need to buy some cheap fake nails so that you aren't cutting your actual nail (that is never, ever a good idea). Using cuticle cutters or nail scissors, roughly cut the false nails before sticking them on. Then, using a sponge, dab both light and dark red polish onto the fake and real nail (where the fake one has been cut off) and over the cuticle line. Go over this with fake blood to make it look realistic. To get an even grimmer effect, dab on some red nail polish before adding the fake nail on to create layers of gory cuts. Ouch!