Whim Midnight Wink, 3 coats plus Seche Vite
One time I had to write an essay about photography and I was asked to defend one of two positions: that photography is biased or that photography represents the world as it truly is. I went with the former because any time you put a human being into the equation, any chance of something being unbiased goes out the window. People pick and choose their subjects, yadda yadda yadda, so forth and so on, you probably are not looking for a rehash of one of my subpar high school essays. My point here is this: photography is not always 100% accurate. I bring this up because all the photos you are going to see in this post make this polish by Whim Nail Lacquer look better than it actually was. In this case, I was not trying to mislead you, but my lighting set-up really liked this guy and my perhaps more pessimistic-inclined naked eye was seeing things that it did not like which the camera rendered non-existent. That’s a great note to begin on, isn’t it?
All of my swatches today are over Zoya Get Even.
Whim Midnight Wink, 1 coat
Whim Nail Lacquer has intrigued me for a while; their bottles are a bit funky, they are exclusive to Ulta, and I had seen very mixed reviews about their polishes. When I saw this pretty sitting in a clearance bin, it was in my hand about .5 seconds after I made eye contact with it. How am I supposed to resist a deep, bright blue base filled with iridescent glitter?
The first coat was a disaster. Just… yuck. It applied fine and the formula felt nice, but it looks so sheer and streaky. I know I am not a nail polish application expert, but anyone who could get an even first coat out of this would have to have magical powers because it just was not happening.
Whim Midnight Wink, 2 coats
It looks better with two coats. Kind of. At first glance, the glitter distracts you into thinking it is on the road to opacity, but when you look past it… ew. Streaky mess still! Just look at my index finger. The patchiness, the dark streaks, the horror!
Whim Midnight Wink, 3 coats
I stopped after three coats because I was quite disappointed with this polish and felt like it would have needed a few more to even the base color out. Who has time for 6 coats of nail polish??? At three coats the glitter density is good and distracting enough that the unevenness of the base is not as noticeable. It did look worse in person than it does here, you could see the patchy-ness everywhere. Not just on my index finger. The only positive things I can say are that one coat of top coat was enough to smooth it out and those glitters really are pretty and blingy. But if you are at all picky like me, do yourself a favor and stay away, because that jelly base does not want to be your friend.
I really do not like to do negative reviews, but the pictures speak for themselves. The unevenness of the base color was really noticeable in person expect when under direct lighting. Those glitters were the only thing that made wearing this polish for three days tolerable. Next time I am using 2 coats as a topper over something else because I cannot stand the uneven, sheer look.
Have you tried Whim polish? Do you think it’s worth trying one of their cream formulas to give them a second chance? Would love to know what you think!
xx, Ashley
short nail swatcher 
I agree with your position about photograph – it is biased! Unless the photograph is taken by AI without any editing… 😛
At first glance the bottle looks awfully similar to Butter London. But yikes, it applies so poorly… can you imagine 6 coats? Might as well go all out and go for Polish Mountain! 😆
I’ve not heard of Whim… maybe next time try one of their shimmers. I just did a google search and these came up:
https://coffeeandmakeup.com/whim-fall-2015-nail-lacquer-review-swatches/
Looks pretty especially that shade “Tall, Dark & Rich”.
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The bottles are similar to BL, except the base is actually wider than the top… it gets thicker towards the bottom. I described that poorly 🙃
Those actually look good, this might be a case where I picked up the one bad polish Whim makes! If I find any more, I’ll look up swatches before purchasing :]
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Never tried the brand, as we don’t have Ulta in Canada. Looks like a cute polish, and it’s a good thing you mentioned how it doesn’t look as bad in the photo as it does in real life! There are always funky polishes that look fantastic IRL but not in photos, and vice versa. So annoying.
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It is annoying how some polishes just do not photo correctly! I think with this one it was all the glitter, the flashy-ness “filled out” the polish’s appearance.
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That totally makes sense. Sparkly and holo polishes can be so tricky. My faves are neons that do a total shift on the color wheel. My camera likes to read neon oranges as pink.
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