UV vs LED Nail Lamp -What Is The Difference?

An important part of gel nail polish application is curing your polish between each layer, and you can use a UV or Mylee LED lamp to do this. But what is the difference between the two?

Both UV and LED lamps serve the same purpose – drying and curing the gel polish. But to understand the differences between these two nail lamps, we’ve taken a dive into how each one works and answered the most common questions.

Both LED and UV nail curing lamps produce light which cures gel polish.

The main difference between the two lamps is the technology within them, the type of bulbs they contain, and the type of light they produce. 

UV nail lamps take longer to cure your gel polish. Typically a layer of gel polish will take 2 minutes to fully cure. 

When we compare this to LED lamps, the time is much quicker. LED lamps, with their narrower wavelengths, can cure polish a lot quicker, usually in 30-60 seconds, or flash cure a nail art design in just 15 seconds.

As the bulbs in these lamps are different, they also last for a different amount of time. The bulbs in a UV lamp last for approximately 4,000 hours.

The amount of time you have your lamp on obviously can vary from person to person and how frequently they use their lamp, but this typically means the bulbs need to be replaced every 6 months or so.

It’s important to note that wattage only measures the amount of electricity the lamp draws in, not how effectively it uses that power to cure your polish. 

You can actually achieve a better cure with a lower-watt lamp, but this depends on other factors, too, like the energy efficiency of the bulbs, location of the bulbs and reflectiveness of the inside of the lamp. 

Mylee's LED lamp achieves a brilliant cure with only 18 watts but converts that to a whopping 20 mW/cm2 (Millwatt per square centimetre) UV light intensity, making it far more energy efficient than others on the market.

This saves you money each time as it uses less energy to achieve a stronger cure!

One common misconception about nail lamps is that only UV lamps emit UV light rays – this is untrue.

Both UV and LED lamps emit very small amounts of UV rays. While overexposure to UV rays has been known to cause damage to the skin, studies have found that the amount of UV rays emitted by a UV or LED lamp is very minimal and therefore nail lamps are safe to use.

You can choose to wear nail gloves or an SPF hand cream if you want to take extra precautions. 

If you’re choosing to use hand cream, take care not to get any on your nails before applying your Mylee polish.

Mylee gel nail polishes can be cured with both the Mylee Pro LED Lamp and a UV lamp, and we strongly recommend using our Mylee lamps to cure your Mylee polish for the best possible results.

There are some gel polishes out there that are UV-only gel polishes, so these will only cure under a UV lamp, and not a Mylee LED lamp.

We get asked this one a lot, and the answer is simply no. Neither UV or LED nail lamps will cure or dry regular nail polish. 

Regular nail polish needs time to dry in the open air, and doesn’t cure or set like gel nail polish does.

Due to the updated technology in LED Lamps, they can last for longer and cure your gel manicure more quickly, so most nail salons will use an LED lamp to speed up their client's appointments and achieve better results.

Mylee LED lamps are perfect for both at-home and salon use, so they’re the best of both worlds.

Overall both UV and LED lamps are effective at giving you a flawless and beautiful gel mani that will last weeks without chipping. But if there’s one that takes the cake, it would be the LED lamp.

LED lamps take less time to cure and have been proven to last longer than UV lamps. Plus, our Mylee Pro LED Lamps have some pretty cool tech that’ll give your gel polish a better finish, and we’re always for up that!

UV lamps are still a good option and will do the job of curing your polish just fine, so if this is your preferred choice, don’t sweat it! 

Just make sure you’re always curing your gel polish for the correct amount of time in the corresponding lamp – whether you’re using LED or UV lamps – and you’ll have a long-lasting salon-worthy mani by the end of it.