Chrome French tips and polka dots may have been huge last year, but nail artists say this year’s trending manicures are more low-maintenance.“The reasoning is pretty much always some combo of ‘I want my nails to look natural’, and being over chipped polish and constant infills, work environments where loud nails feel like a lot, or just wanting that effortless low-maintenance style,” says celebrity manicurist Iram Shelton.At Marc Jacobs’ spring/summer 2026 show, models walked the runway with short, bare-looking, deliberately unpolished nails.The runway chimed with a wider trend known as “naked nails”, where natural-looking nail beds, neat shapes and healthy shine replaced elaborate art and obvious colour – perhaps an extension of the “clean girl make-up” look.Social media is taking the trend one step further with “nailmaxxing” – a term for maximising the appearance and health of your natural nails.“It’s probably the biggest shift I’ve seen in my chair this past year,” Shelton says. “People who used to come in begging for chrome or crazy nail art are now like ‘make it look like I’m not wearing anything’, which is kind of funny because that look actually takes way more skill than people think.”If you want to master nailmaxxing, here is how to perfect a manicure so it looks like you barely have one at all.