Revlon Gel Envy in Casino Lights & Full House || Swatches & Review ||

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a sponsored post! All products were bought with my own money and all opinions are my own. 

Gel Envy retails for approximately $7.99 for .4 fl oz (11.7 mL) depending on where you go. It's on the more expensive part of the spectrum, especially considering it's Revlon. Watch for sales and discounts, drugstores often have buy one get one free deals or 40% off the whole brand. 

These nail polishes claim to be built with a base, so I tested all of these without a basecoat. However, I recommend using one with these. I found Full House stained my nails a bit when I swatched it. After my wear test, Casino Lights stained my nails yellow. Revlon made a really good basecoat in its old line, Gel Smooth Envy, that I still use today. 

I have two shades for this review: Full House, a pretty pool blue, and Casino Lights, a bright yellow.

The brushes are made up of two smaller brushes and are slightly curved. However, with all three bottles, the brushes were constructed poorly (you can see in my application demo). The hairs were uneven in length, making it more challenging to get a neat curve around the cuticle area, especially when painting with the non-dominant hand. 


   As you can see, all the brushes are all uneven. 

The formula is a bit thicker than your typical nail polish. As a result, one coat was sufficient for both colors, as it was very opaque. It dries to the touch within 4-5 minutes (NOTE: to the touch, that does NOT mean completely dry!) depending on the color and the thickness of your coat. (just to let you know, OPI, my favorite nail polish brand, dries to the touch within a minute!) 

Full House Application Demo

Casino Lights Application Demo 

The nail polish is very shiny, but it as shiny as gel? Nope. But it's still shiny. A lot of other regular nail polishes like OPI and China Glaze are very shiny as well but they don't claim to be gel. 

This nail polish line's lasting power isn't really that much different from other brands. Several polishes from OPI can last a week for me with very minor chips. (I wore Ski Slope Sweetie last week, and I had only one chip on my left middle finger by the weekend). I tested this line on two other people and they all had very minor chips within the first day. You can see the results after a week here 

So is this "revolutionary gel" nail polish different than a typical nail polish formula? Not by much. Are they like actual gel nails? No. To be honest, "gel" is pretty much a gimmick, but aside from that, this is a decent line. Is this line better than OPI? No. OPI is still my favorite :)