Soft serve nails: The viral summer manicure that’s as sweet as it sounds

There’s a manicure trend that’s making its way not-so-stealthily across Tiktok, celebrity fingertips and salon chairs this summer, which is just as sweet, smooth and nostalgic as it sounds. Cue soft serve nails: A delectable, milky dream of a manicure that blends the best bits of a French manicure with a gel ombré and – you’ve guessed it – ice cream.

A creamy, buttery array of subtle, sorbet shades, whipped pinks and creamy nudes that melt seamlessly into sheer, milky white at the nail tip, soft serve nails are finished with a high-gloss top coat. Think colour that is seamlessly ‘churned’ – if you will -with no beginning or end: strawberry and vanilla swirls, subtle raspberry ripple or even creamy apricot. This is a manicure breed that blends minimal elegance with playful charm.

But why – when nail trends come and go as they do – has this one gone quite so stratospheric? Put simply, it’s feminine, low-effort and utterly versatile, but still delivers the quiet elegance and understated luxury that we all want and need right now.

Then of course – of course – there’s the fact that it aligns with the clean girl aesthetic which continues to reign supreme and go absolutely nowhere fast. Yes, this is the kind of manicure that doesn’t shout or scream, but steadily clocks up compliments everywhere from the coffee queue, to cocktails and nursery pickup.

Celebrity manicurist Harriet Westmoreland (@harrietwestmoreland) has earned a global reputation for her meticulous work in recent years, and has done much to take minimal manicure trends like this one viral time and time and time again. Queen of the modern French, she has been sliding variations of the soft serve into her summer appointments and social feeds over the last months, keeping her iterations glossy, clean and short.