If I ask you what shape are your nails, this could mean two things:

1) What condition are your nails in?

2) What shape are your nails filed?

If you look at the following chart you can see the 5 basic nail shapes.  The numbers refer to the most and least strongest nail shapes.  Square being the strongest, pointed being the weakest.

I have generally gone with the squoval shape and have never really been able to grow my nails beyond any real length before they get knocked and break.  My primary reason for breakage is cleaning!  Without fail one or more nails will have a head-on collision with a tiled wall.  It’s either a small fracture down at the very base of my nail edge or a total tip break off.

The rare times I’ve been able to grow my nails was when I was pregnant and when I did the 6 Weeks to Sexy program – maybe the low carbs and exercise made a difference.  You can see how my nails looked then in my nail-art video below.

I have a friend who has long, pretty nails that are oval shaped.  Upon seeing her nails I wondered if the shape of her nails helped them grow.   According to the chart my nails should be growing fine, while her oval nails are meant to be weaker and break more often, yet hers rarely break and always look good.

I filed my nails into an oval shape about 2 weeks ago and miraculously they are growing and are now around 6mm long.   Since then I’ve cleaned a number of times and have broken 3 nails on my right hand and my pinky nail on the left.

I plan on keeping the experiment up to see what results I yield.

I’m curious… do your nails grow well and what shape do you opt for?