How To Clean Your Nails For Men: 3 Simple Steps

This post is about how to clean your nails for men. If you are anything like me, depending on your job, you get your hands pretty dirty. My job constantly has me working with grease and other dirty equipment that leave my fingernails looking truly atrocious. Dirty by the amount of dirt or grease under your fingernails or grease around the outside of your nails in the side crevices.

This can look unruly and unkept and is unacceptable at any dinner table. My wife tells me about it, which is a serious part of my grooming game. So, this post will be all about how to clean your nails for men—methods, tools, and techniques to remove the mess at the end of your fingers adequately.

Let’s get started being a better, well-groomed gentleman!

The Steps

This isn’t rocket surgery, but it can often go overlooked, so I decided to make a pretty simple and effective grooming routine to handle dirty fingernails.

1. Have good-quality nail clippers or a men’s manicure set, and keep your nails short.
2. Have a Gritty Soap & Use It
3. Use A Nail Brush

Nail Clippers & Manicure Sets

Having shorter, well-trimmed nails is the first step to having clean, well-kept fingernails. Longer fingernails can easily collect more dirt than shorter nails. The shorter the nail, the easier it is to keep clean, plus it looks better. Granted, a shorter fingernail can still collect dirt, but it sure is easier to clean and maintain.

Most everyone has a nail clipper or a small pair of scissors. Depending on the money you spend on them will factor in how well they perform. Most cheap nail clippers will work well at first but, over time, will quickly become subpar in performance. Either becoming dull or not as sharp or just being too cheaply designed so as not to cut thick fingernails adequately. Most men have thicker fingernails and need a good quality fingernail clipper.

I have bought cheap manicure sets in the past, and they just are simply a waste of money. Save your money and buy a quality set right off the get-go. I would suggest purchasing a quality manicure set or a quality nail clipper. Nothing cheap, as the cheap ones hardly ever work well and often can not handle trimming nails. Anything under the twenty-dollar mark would avoid purchasing.

A Good Gritty Soap

Dirt on your hands and fingernails is often easy enough to clean with regular soap and water. But throw some grease or oily substance into the mix, and normally, regular soap won’t touch it. Most mechanic shops know this as they often have some abrasion soap in their restrooms.

We need some soap with some extra abrasion added to help get into the small cracks and lines of our hands. This abrasion can come in various forms like ground pumice stone, salt, sand, oatmeal, seeds, etc. You get the point.

Having a gritty soap really helps your hands become cleaner much much faster than ordinary soap and will often get into those hard-to-get clean areas. So, if you often work with grease or your hands are hard to clean, seriously consider using a gritty soap. I know I have found this to get my hands clean much faster, and I always try to have at least two types of soap around my bathrooms. A bar of regular soap and an abrasive type soap.

What Soaps I Recommend

• Dr. Squatch Pine Tar Soap – This is one of my favorite soaps I have tried. It has a very pleasing natural pine smell with added sand, oatmeal, and activated charcoal that quickly cleans up the dirtiest of hands in no time. You can check out my full review of their soap here: Dr. Squatch Pine Tar Soap Review. Find out why this soap is so popular.
• Sudsy Bear Old Forest Pine Tar -Sudsy Bear has some of the best-smelling soaps I have ever smelled. They also have a huge selection of different scents to choose from. All of their soaps are made with organic natural ingredients. This soap also has activated charcoal, gritty pumice powder, and oatmeal to deal with any possible dirt on your hands or body.
• Swanky Badger Coral Reef & Lumber Scrub Soaps – Another great soap company with great smelling soaps. Both of these mentioned soaps have pumice added to them to really help scrub the dirt and grim away. Read more about Swanky Badger here: Swanky Badger Natural Soap Review.

A Nail Brush – Pulvirises Dirty Fingernails

A good nail brush, along with a good gritty soap and warm water, will destroy any dirt or grease under your fingernails or on your hands. This is the trifecta of having clean hands and fingernails. This combination will get your hands cleaned up and look neat and clean. This tool for some reason or another, I never thought of using this until my wife commented on how dirty my hands were, and she suggested I get a nail brush.

So, me being me, I went to Amazon and purchased three different nail brushes in order to find the one I liked the best and to have two for both of our bathrooms. I’ve been using these brushes on and off after my full-time job for about two weeks now, and I will briefly review each of the nail brushes below and let you decide which one is right for you.

Libman Hand & Nail Brush

A well-thought-out brush!

This is the easiest to hold and to go to town cleaning your hands as per the excellent handle design. The large handle and angled grip make this super easy to get your hands clean. I have pretty big hands, and I can easily hold this and scrub away with it to my heart’s content. The bristles are medium in flexibility and hardness.

This would be my top pick for just about any man out there. The Goldilocks principle is not too stiff and not too soft but just right. It’s a good, happy medium. The handle makes it easy to hang around the shower and keep out of the way.

Tweezerman Dual Nail Brush Model No. 3086-R

The Tweezerman Dual Nail brush is a two-sided brush. The softer bristles are for cleaning the top of the nail, and the smaller, stiffer bristles are for cleaning under the nails. This makes a lot of sense as you don’t need a stiff bristle for cleaning the more sensitive top of the nail, but you want a stiffer bristle for getting under the nail. The handle fits great in your hand and is comfortable to hold and use.

Grip Clean Heavy Duty Fingernail Scrub Brush

This has longer bristles, but they are much stiffer than the other two nail brushes. It would be a top choice for mechanics or people who get their hands dirty. I would highly recommend removing the suction cups and throwing them away, though.

One of the suction cups didn’t stick to anything for long, and I actually think it works better and feels better holding it without the suction cups. But maybe it is for hanging it in the shower. I’ll leave it up to you to decide. But this gets under the nail the best and is the stiffest of bristles, which I also like. But it might be too stiff for men with softer hands.

How Long Should It Take To Clean Your Hands With This Method?

Even the dirtiest hands and fingernails shouldn’t take long to clean using the abovementioned methods. I would say no longer than well under ten minutes to clean.

Can You Use The Nail Brush On Other Areas Of The Body?

Yes, I often use it on my toes and feet along with my arms too. My arms are often covered in grease that is hard to get off, but I use it more gently and softer than I would on my fingernails. Just don’t over-scrub the area; otherwise, you’re going to irritate the skin too much. I would recommend a medium of soft bristle for your arms.

The Final Thoughts On How To Clean Your Nails For Men

Using the methods and tools I listed above has cleaned up my hand and fingernail game. It is simple and very effective and doesn’t take a lot of time.

I would love to hear how you clean your fingernails. Do you like something different? Leave a comment below.