Aurora, Chameleon and Glitter Gel: Specifying Effect Pigments

Short answer: aurora, chameleon, chrome and glitter are not variations of one product — they are different pigment systems with different particle sizes, different behaviour in the bottle and different removal. Buy them by effect type and particle size, not by marketing name, or you will compare two suppliers' "aurora" that are not the same thing at all.

Interference pigments: the colour is in the angle

Aurora and chameleon pigments are built from alternating thin layers — usually mica or synthetic silica with titanium dioxide, sometimes several layers — that reflect different wavelengths at different viewing angles. What you see is not a pigment colour but interference. That has two practical consequences: the effect depends on film thickness, and it depends on what is underneath. The same pigment over black reads deep and saturated; over white it looks pastel and often disappoints the buyer who approved it on a black swatch.

• Always approve an interference shade over the base colour it will actually be sold with.
• Thick top coats flatten the shift — a thin, high-gloss top coat preserves it.
• Matte top coats keep the colour travel but kill the sparkle; that is a design decision, not a defect.

Chrome is a powder, not a layer

Chrome and mirror effects come from a very fine metallic or pearlescent powder rubbed over a no-wipe top coat that has been cured but not wiped. It is a surface treatment, not a pigmented gel, which is why chrome wears at the edges first and why it cannot be sold as a single bottle product without a top coat. Particle size is small, typically single-digit to about 20 µm, and the finer the powder the more mirror-like and the more it shows every ridge in the gel underneath.

Glitter: two materials, two removal stories

PET film glitter is bright, uniform and cheap, and it is the reason salons complain about removal: the flakes do not dissolve in acetone, so they have to be filed or soaked out. Synthetic mica glitter costs more, reads softer and breaks down better. If your customers complain about soak-off time on glitter shades, the glitter material is usually the cause, not the base gel.

Settling: the spec nobody writes down

Effect pigments are denser than the resin around them, so they settle. A soft settlement that redisperses with a shake is normal; a hard cake that needs a stirrer is a formulation problem, usually too little thixotrope or too low a viscosity for the pigment load. Ask how long the product stays usable without mixing, and test it: leave a bottle upright for two weeks, then turn it over and watch how long the colour takes to become uniform again.

What belongs on your spec sheet

• Effect type and particle size range, in micrometres.
• The base colour the effect was designed over.
• Recommended film thickness and number of coats.
• Removal method and expected soak-off time.
• Settling behaviour and recommended storage temperature.
• Whether the shade is a single product or a two-step system with a top coat.

Why effect gels cost more

Interference and magnetic pigments are among the most expensive ingredients in a nail gel, often several times the cost of the resin system per kilogram, and they are used at high load to get coverage. That load also raises viscosity, which is why effect gels are formulated thicker than colour gels. A quote that lands close to plain colour price is either using a low pigment load or a coarse, cheap substrate — ask which, and ask for the particle size in writing.

For the magnetic side of the same category, our guides to how cat eye gel polish works and cat eye wholesale terms go deeper into alignment, magnets and pricing. For a spec sheet on any series we make, ask us directly.