If I use an LED nail lamp on a product designed for traditional UV nail lamps, will the UV gel become over cured?

Yes, it can lead to over curing and this can cause a nail coating to overheat, burn the nail bed, and lead to the separation of the plate from the bed. Bacteria or fungi can then infect these areas more easily.

UV gels should only be cured using the UV gel lamp or lamps specified by the UV gel manufacturer.

LED style nail lamps emit much more UV than fluorescent-style UV nail lamps and these levels may be too much for traditional nail coating products unless they are specifically designed for LED lamps.

If a UV nail lamp was not specifically designed for the UV gel being used, over curing is a very real issue that can lead to injury and harm, so I would warn against doing this.

Many things can go wrong when nail professionals don’t use a nail lamp that properly cures their UV curing products. That’s why I recommend only using the nail lamp that is specified by the manufacturer of the UV product.

The Key to Proper UV Gel Curing: Compatibility with Specific Lamps

It doesn’t matter if a company makes the nail lamp, especially for the UV gel, what matters is if the UV gel is formulated specifically to work with one (or two) lamps. No UV gel can be formulated to properly cure with any nail lamp, no matter what type of nail lamp it is. Some mistakenly think that so-called “dual lamps” will properly cure all types of UV gels, but that is a false assumption. As I’ve pointed out in other articles, both the wavelength range AND the intensity of the wavelengths are very important to ensure proper cure and no one lamp can properly cure all UV gels.