<p>I will be visiting my niece and taking her for her first manicure this weekend. They (niece and SIL, who is a no-frills, minimal-makeup kind of person) live in a fairly small town but there is a mall with a nails store, a Wal-Mart that has a nails station at the front of the store, and also about a half-dozen beauty salons that also do nails.</p>
<p>Any thoughts about how to choose where to take niece?</p>
<p>We recently moved to a new area. I’m finding “Yelp” to be invaluable for finding services like nail salon, hair salon, picture framing, dog grooming, leather repair, etc. It’s also great for restaurant reviews. Of course we moved to a large metropolitan area, so there are lots of reviews posted, but perhaps there are some for your niece’s town, too?</p>
<p>Agree re yelp, especially if you don’t live in the at. I just found a new place through yelp. My nails look so good that strangers often comment on them and ask where I get them done. So that is another way, if you live in the area where you are looking don’t be afraid to ask someone you see with good looking nails. I’m always happy for the compliment and happy to help my salon owner with new customers.</p>
<p>I just walk into the closest inexpensive nail salon and take the next available chair. If you’re not getting anything fancy, most of them are perfectly competent. There is so much competition that it’s hard to stay in business if you don’t do a decent job. Magazine selection is pretty important to me, though.</p>
<p>I would ask the owner about their sterilization techniques. See if they have an autoclave to treat their reusable tools or if they simply dip the tools in some sort of a solution. If they do the latter, they are cutting corners and could be spreading disease. Bring you own nail polish and insist on using it. Nail fungus is not something that is easily treatable, and sadly, it can be spread via mani/pedi route.</p>