Grove Collaborative
Terra nail polish

We Tried It: Terra Beauty Bars Nail Polish & Quick Dry Plant Drops

Last Updated: April 14, 2022

Still searching for nail polish that’ll stay put but not reek of chemicals? We tried Terra Beauty Bars Nail Polish and Quick Dry Oil to see how the polish would hold up for a week, and we’re spilling the details on achieving manicured perfection.

Like most other beauty products you see on the market, nail polish has its pros and cons, especially when it comes to formulations from your big-name brands. Pros: long-lasting, chip-free color in a range of shades to match your personality. Cons: questionable chemicals and ingredients to achieve deep color saturation, quick-dry results, and extended wearability. But a number of brands are setting out to prove that you don’t have to sacrifice performance when transitioning to a natural nail polish, like the ones from Terra Beauty bars.


Terra Beauty Bars seeks to take the bad stuff out of the equation by bringing you lacquer that lacks nothing — except the ingredients the brand intentionally omits. This brand is 10-free, meaning it takes the guesswork out of the equation by automatically removing the 10 nastiest culprits found in most nail polishes. You won’t find things like formaldehyde, parabens, xylene, or acetone here (just to name a few).


Since I want to lead a healthier life and avoid harsh ingredients — especially those big 10 found in conventional polishes — I was intrigued by Terra Beauty Bars' natural alternative. But I was also worried that those ingredients found in big-name nail polishes were the ones that make traditional polish work so well. So has Terra Beauty Bars done the impossible, and created a nail lacquer that delivers the same pigmentation and wearability without all the icky stuff? Intrigued by this premise, I was excited to find out what a healthier hue could really do.

The claim: Terra Beauty Bars polish and Quick Dry plant drops do everything traditional nail polishes do – minus icky chemicals

trio of Terra nail polish

I love the look of nail polish. It’s so much fun to add color to my daily life by layering on my favorite edgy tones, like this badass Dark Eggplant shade I chose. What I don’t like about nail polish is that it smudges, chips, and smells like it should be banned for anyone under 21. As a guitarist and crochet artist, I use my hands for a lot of things that don’t typically play well with polish.


For this experiment, I tried both the Terra Beauty Bars #15 and the plant drops quick dry oil on my fingernails. Spoiler alert: These products did not disappoint. The quick-dry serum mostly eradicated the potential for me to smudge my nails before they were fully dry (and it also boasts of good-for-you ingredients you can trust, like coconut oil and avocado oil).


I typically don’t do fancy stuff like a top coat, but I more recently have gotten into that simply because I’m sick of my polish not staying put. However, to properly gauge the efficacy of these products, I opted to go without and just try the plant drops on top.

a hand with freshly painted fingernails next to a bottle of Terra nail polish

How I applied Terra Beauty Bars nail polish and drying gel

I applied two very smooth coats of Dark Eggplant #15 before taking the plunge and going for the drying oil. I immediately noticed the sheer lack of chemical odors from this stuff. It literally smells like nail polish, but not to the extent you’d typically think – how could this be? That’s the magic of using real ingredients. I’m here for it.


I wish I could share exactly how long it took to dry with the drying oil, but I was afraid to touch it too soon to find out. But I would say that it was definitely faster than polishes typically dry, and while this product wasn’t actually a topcoat, I do think it functioned somewhat similarly to what a topcoat might do (at least to act as a somewhat protective barrier).


Application was super easy: The plant drops came with an eye dropper that allowed me to precisely apply them to my wet polish. Then, the serum disappeared as quickly as it fell, adhering quickly to my nails. I have no idea how an alcohol-free liquid could act as a drying agent, but this one definitely did.

fingernails with grown-out nail polish

Natural nail polish staying power compared to traditional brands

This part was the most impressive to me, because this nail polish would rarely chip (and really only slightly if I kept agitating the same areas repeatedly like I did when crocheting). I literally noticed it growing out more than chipping, which shows that whatever natural ingredients are in here, they actually do their job better than traditional polishes. This stuff stays put, so you can rock your chosen color as long as you’d like (or at least until your nails grow out). For me, the seven-day mark was about where I would want to remove it and start fresh, but as pictured, it really didn’t look so bad even then.


I noticed the color stayed pretty bright the whole time, so it never got dingy or gross in tone. Everyone’s been there before: the black nail polish that turns a bit gray, or the white that gets slightly yellowed. Not a cute look on anyone – so how well this polish held up was a really great surprise in that category.

The removal process

Ironically, this was my only real complaint about these products (which isn’t really a complaint at all). The whole point of nail polish is for it to stay put as long as you want it to. So after a week, it was relatively grown out, and I was thinking it was time to call it. I used a pretty generic natural-ish remover, which typically works effortlessly on regular polish. But Terra Beauty Bars did not succumb so easily to the wiles of my scrubbing power. I had to patiently employ some decent elbow grease to get it to budge.


After I gave up, there were still some remnants left on the corners of my nails, but I didn’t really mind because I was glad to see that the product held up pretty much as promised.

The verdict: Does natural nail polish and quick-dry oil work as well as traditional products?

Easy answer: Yes, 100%. Not only does this polish glide on effortlessly, look great, and stay put, but it’s also free from the 10 most problematic ingredients in most other brands. Sure, removal takes a bit of tenacity – but so do all the best things in life. The drying serum is a trusty sidekick, ready to team up with your polish to get you back to your daily routine without skipping a beat.


With so many fun colors to choose from, there’s no way you won’t be able to find one to match your mood. Why not take a peek at what Terra Beauty Bars has to offer?

photo of the author, Angelina Singer

About the author: Angelina Singer has been writing for Grove Collaborative since 2021. She loves all things luxury and fun, with an emphasis on whimsical pop punk style and being your best self. Here at Grove, she thrives doing all of this and more as a content editor and writer alongside her gigs as a published author and freelancer.

Read more from Grove