As an education training manager and nail technician for CND—not to mention a Fashion Week regular—Roxanne Valinoti always has the newest looks at her fingertips. Keep reading for her fall nail forecast and suggestions for coordinating trends to your skin tone.

SKIN TONE
According to Valinoti, skin tones are thought of in terms of warm and cool. Not sure what yours is? Whether or not you realize it, Valinoti says you know: “Generally speaking, if you like gold jewelry and look good wearing it, your skin is warm-toned. If you wear a lot of silver then your skin tone is on the cooler side.”

COLORS

Nude Nudes were stylish for spring—and according to Valinoti they’re fallworthy, too. Just beware of flaunting your ballet-slipper-pink polish. “The It Nude for fall is what I call ‘grayge’—a gray-beige that’s opaque and mannequin-like,” she says. To customize this trend to your specific skin color, Valinoti says to think of it as an “extension of your skin,” adding that the final result will have “a lengthening effect on hands and fingers.” How to pull it off: Once you settle on a skin-matching beige hue, add a couple drops of black polish for a gray tint.

Gray Sultry jewel tones—think sapphire, amethyst—and shades of black are popular, but for fall, Valinoti suggests a different way to go dark. “We did a lot of gunmetal grays this season,” she says. “It’s a spin-off of the dark trend we’ve been seeing, and it complements all skin tones.” To try your hand at this variation, take metallic silver polish and add a touch of black.

Red “Red is a classic we see a lot,” says Valinoti, who recalls ruby nails at the Rebecca Taylor and Luca Luca fall 2009 shows. “You can never go wrong with it.” While superdark and/or blue-based reds work on everyone, Valinoti says that only warm skin tones can handle orange-based reds like coral (cooler skin colors will look washed out).