Maychiri's Thoughts: Color Therapy

Sally Hansen Color Therapy [165 - Tea Time] Review

September 28, 2025

Sally Hansen... again. Well, maybe this one will be similar to the Complete Salon Manicure, which was awesome? Who am I kidding... anyways, this is the Sally Hansen Color Therapy, in the shade 165/Tea Time!

Here we go again... well, I can take solace in the fact that there aren’t many ranges I have to try out anymore, I guess. So, in my quest to try out one of each Sally Hansen nail polish, I have come to this one, which seems to be a conditioning nail polish in addition to a colour one. I would be excited, were the last couple of Sally Hansens not a disaster. I am mostly doing this so that I can see which ones are good and which aren’t (spoiler alert: the latter is far more common)... I didn’t even want this colour originally. I wanted a lighter cool-toned brown, but all the variants that were that kind of colour were sold out. So I guess I will take this warm-toned clay brown? It might even look good, who knows? Eh, how bad can it get, really? Well, let’s see I guess...

Packaging: ah, this is the same kind of bottle the Complete Salon Manicure used! It’s voluptuous, isn’t it? Plump, you might even say! I love how curvy it is, this helps it stand our from the rest of the nail polishes. It feels surprisingly lightweight given the size! The text is copper coloured in the front, which really pops against the clay-brown of the nail polish! The cap is similarly curvy, but, since it is made from a reflective metal material, it is a flipping fingerprint magnet. It takes no time for it to become all smudgy. The cap closes quite securely, so you don’t have to worry that the nail polish will dry out any time soon. I like this bottle, it’s a fun design!

Ingredients: argan (Argania spinosa) kernel oil, evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) oil, açaí (Euterpe oleracea) fruit oil, safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) seed oil, kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) extract, vitamin E for nourishment. 3-free (DBP, formaldehyde, toluene); it contains parabens, though, specifically, methylparaben. Unfortunate. But I like how it has hydrolysed conchiolin! That should help the nails become at least a little bit stronger. Also, so many oils! Wonder if this will make a difference? The scent is, at first, similar to most nail polishes, but it soon becomes very sweet and aromatic. Weird. But it’s okay. The expiration date is 30 months after opening.

Brush: very short, flat brush. It’s got rounded ends to help with how it applies nail polish. The brush might seem small, but it is wide enough once you spread it wide. And because it is smaller than average, it is more precise, able to apply nail polish relatively cleanly to the sides of the nails. It applies the polish evenly and pretty richly, so it looks opaque with just one coat. However, it picks up an insanely large amount of nail polish, so be sure to tap off the excess! Not the best brush, but it is quite far from being the worst. It’s decent.

Colour: okay, I admit, I like this colour! I was on the fence at first, but it actually looks so elegant on the nails! It's a rosy brown with a decent amount of warm tones in it, without being too reddish. It actually looks a bit cool-toned on me, somehow! It’s close to Pantone's colour “Ash rose”, being a very clay-like kind of brown. And you know, there’s something so nice about a clay-coloured nail polish! It looks awesome on pale skin, it really pops without being too aggressive. And it’s such a great basic, neutral colour as well! To me, it really looks like either some sort of red dirt mud or clay – mostly clay. Not exactly terracotta as it’s less red, but like raw/unbaked clay. Gorgeous!

And perfect for late summer and autumn – especially autumn! Tho I have no idea what it had got to do with tea? Tea shouldn’t be this muddy/clay-ish brown? The name doesn’t make sense... whatever, it still doesn’t change the fact that this colour is really stunning!

This is such a weird formula. Like, it is pretty thick but it is also watery. In some ways, it feels oily, which, I guess makes sense because it does contain plenty of oils. It’s also a bit runny, but not to the point of being hard to use. It’s not the easiest to apply because it does like to spill over the sides of the nails, but it applies perfectly evenly, so you don’t need to keep messing with it just to get it right. Also, while it feels quite thick when I am applying it, it dries down into a weirdly thin finish. Like, it feels cheap. Idk, I don’t like this formula.

One coat is already opaque and 100% even. I could leave it at this, but they said that you need to apply two coats so I will. What will change? Probably just the colour a little bit. We’ll see. Okay, so, applying two coats did not really do much. It is still opaque and looks thick, but it also feels thin. Like, why does it feel so flimsy when I applied two pretty decently thick coats? The colour is a bit more intense, but that’s the only change. Definitely don’t apply more than two coats, there is no point in doing that. The texture is pretty glossy; it should have that copper shimmer, but it isn’t really that visible.

Longevity is completely rubbish, just like I knew it would be. I knew, as soon as I saw how thin the formula is, that it would not last even a day, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t chip much in the traditional sense, it just had two tiny chips before a hair wash. But it’s edge wear that’s one major issue, but not the only one. It took the nail polish less than 24 hours for the edge wear to become really noticeable, and by the end of the third day, all of my nails had an ugly white line right at the very end. Not cool! Not one bit! So, obviously, it doesn’t adhere to the nail plate properly. But this isn’t the only huge issue. See, it gets absolutely destroyed with scratches in no time. Like, I woke up and all of my nails were already ruined.

This is because the formula still felt goopy when I went to bed, 2 hours after painting my nails and drying them with nail drying drops that do cure nail polish. So, great... freshly applied and already ruined. Bah. And it’s not just some tiny scratches, I am talking about huge indentations in the nail polish that make the otherwise pretty gloss into a muted mess.

I am just grateful that this nail polish is this easy to remove. It doesn’t take a lot of rubbing to completely wipe it off and it doesn’t make the nails yellow. Awesome, because I was really worried that my nails had become yellow!

All in all, what a misery this nail polish is. Look, the colour is gorgeous but that’s about it as far as good things are concerned. This is a clay-ish brown kind of colour that is really beautiful, especially on pale skin. It is so elegant and chic and so neutral, so it goes with pretty much anything. I love how it has just enough red pigments to look classy, these clay kind of colours can quickly veer into dated territory. But this one is a timeless clay classic! The shimmer isn’t visible, really, which is for the best. The brush is decent, it doesn’t have any trouble applying the nail polish properly and it picks up more than enough polish. So that was the good. Barely anything, right? Well, you’ll see why in a second. See, the formula is pure hot garbage. It feels oily and thick but so watery that it’s awful. It’s not really runny, but it feels so cheap. Like, it actually feels like a cheap, rubbish formula. This is because it quickly dries down into a paper-thin finish that feels like it’s going to chip at any moment. This, luckily, doesn’t happen, not until a few days in, or until you wash your hair. But the biggest problem – that is even worse than the formula – is the scratching issue. This nail polish has precisely zero resistance to being scratched up. This ruins the lovely glossy texture it has. Just great. But it gets worse: it suffers terribly from the polish just disappearing on the free edges of the nails. Edge wear is really bad here. By the end of the first 24 hours, there was already noticeable edge wear. Horrible... just terrible. And a hair wash destroys it. So you really need a protective base and top coat for this nail polish if you want it to last more than a day. The only reason it is not getting a lower grade is because I really like the colour. Everything else is just bad, man. But I am used to this with Sally Hansens at this point... even though I naïvely thought that it would be good like the Complete Salon Manicure, which has the same bottle – but obviously, not the same formula. I just want to move on from this, I really, really dislike it. No, no recommendation. How could I?

Rating: 3/10

Would buy again? Absolutely NO

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Sally Hansen Color Therapy [165 - Tea Time] Review

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