Nude manicures will always be classic.

Since humans have been wandering the earth making fire and foraging for food (OK, maybe not that long), a neat set of nails in blush pink, light beige, nude or the Queen’s personal favourite, Essie Ballet Slippers pink, have been a symbol of pulled togetherness.

But right now, there’s a new ‘neutral nails’ everyone’s wearing and they’re called tonal nails.

Side note – here’s how to safely remove acrylic nails at home, post continues after video.

What are tonal nails?

Tonal nails are a way of painting your nails using several shades of one colour on each nail, rather than just one colour for every nail.

In simpler terms: they’re rainbow nails, but hold the rainbow.

It’s similar to tonal dressing, which involves choosing a colour (say, forest green or pink) and wearing it head-to toe-in different shades, like a bright pink knit with a blush skirt and berry heels. You can wear it in place of a nude/neutral manicure, or go bright with bold shades.

Overseas, LA-based nail artist Betina Goldstein has been posting variations of tonal nails for months – over 15,000 people liked an image of her tonal nails back in February. Our own Aussie beauty entrepreneur Zoe Foster Blake also wore peach/pinky tonal nails for Mecca’s annual beauty festival Meccaland in May.

These delightful pictures alone should be enough to convince you to give tonal nails a go.

How to do tonal nails.

Tonal nails can be done with acrylic nails, SNS nails and gel manicures. You can also use your own handiwork and give yourself a tonal nails manicure at home.

1. Choose your tonal colour palette.

Like tonal dressing, choose a colour palette for your nails with varying shades of the one colour. For example, you could do light to dark berry shades, or a pale blue through to navy blue.

In Goldstein’s original tonal nails post, she used the Dior nail polish shades: 108 Muguet, 155 Tra-la-la, 121 Lili, 257 Incognito and 403 Palais Royal.