Why is Gel Polish Turning Yellow? Nail Tech Troubleshooting

Question
Hi Maggie,
I am a qualified Nail Tech, have been in the industry for almost 13 years. I offer gel and acrylic to my clients.
I have a client, who's nails I have been doing for the past 6 years. She originally had gel (Starnail# and was chipping the corners #she has them extremely sharp square# so I switched her to acrylic #Entity) with a thin coat of gel over the top. 2 infills ago her nails had turned yellow.Not her natural nail or the acrylic, but the top coat of gel. I used a new pot of gel for the top coat and it has happened again. I am wondering what could cause the top coat of gel to turn yellow all of a sudden. I have always used the same products on this client and none of my other clients have ever had this problem.
I would like to fix this as the client is very valuable to me and I don't like that my work appears to be less than perfect.
Any response would be greatly appreciated!
Chelsea.

Answer
Are you using the Star Nail gel over the Entity acrylic? Do you use the same gel over your other acrylic clients too?

Are you only using the gel over the acrylic for the shine? Did you use any sort of bonding agent over the acrylic?

What type of gel is it? Is it a soak off gel?

So many variables to track down... if it's a soak off gel, there's a chance that it simply absorbed some pigment from something she touched along the way. Soak off gels tend to be more porous than traditional gels, as do gel topcoats that cure without a tacky layer, so they often discolor. If this is the case, try using a traditional builder or top gloss gel.

If you don't normally use this gel/acrylic combination, I'd invest in Entity's recommended gel for use over acrylics.

If you usually use this combination and it's not happening on other clients, it's most likely something that your client is doing. Which can be even harder to track down because you can't follow them around 24/7 watching what they do. It could be something as simple as a new cleaning product.

If any of the above suggestions don't apply or don't help, get back to me and also let me know specifically which gel (brand and line) you're using and I'll see if I can get ahold of more information.