How this index works: methodology and editorial policy

What this site is and is not

This site is a public, free-to-use index of nail salons and individual nailists in Bangkok. It exists so that someone — a resident, a visitor, a curious passerby — can see what exists, where, and roughly what to expect, without having to scroll through promotional listings to find a basic address.

This site is not a directory that sells placement. It is not a review aggregator (we do not collect or display user reviews). It is not a booking platform (we do not handle reservations, deposits, or payments). It is not a ranking. It is not, by intention, a guide that says "this studio is better than that one."

Studios that appear on this site did not pay to be here. Studios that disappear from this site did not fail a paid review. Both events are governed by the rules below.

How studios get on this index

A studio is considered for listing if it meets these conditions:

1. It is primarily a nail business. Studios where nail services are one of several offerings (full beauty clinics, brow bars with nails on the side, lash salons that occasionally do nails) are evaluated case by case. A studio that is mostly something else but offers nails is marked accordingly or excluded.
2. It operates in Bangkok or its immediate metropolitan area. Studios further out are kept in a separate regional pipeline that may become future city-specific indexes; they are not shown on the Bangkok pages.
3. It exists. Closed or dormant studios are removed when we learn of the closure.
4. It has not requested removal. Studios that have asked to be removed are removed and not re-added unless they ask to be.

There is no minimum quality threshold. A studio with one chair in a residential soi is listed on the same basis as a studio with thirty staff inside a mall. Both meet the conditions; both are mapped.

What "mapped, not ranked" means

A search for "Bangkok nail salons" elsewhere on the internet will usually return a list shaped by who paid to be listed, who has the most reviews, or who has the most search-friendly website. None of those things tell you whether a studio is near you, whether it is open on Sunday, or whether it does the kind of work you are looking for.

This site is built on the opposite premise: that the most useful thing it can do is show what exists, organized so you can read it, without putting a thumb on the scale.

That means:

• Listings are ordered alphabetically or by area, not by quality, popularity, or any internal score.
• We do not rate or score studios.
• We do not display "featured," "recommended," or "top picks" sections.
• The organic editorial index is not for sale. No payment changes a studio's position, visibility, or appearance within the editorial database.
• We do not write or commission promotional content about specific studios.
• Guides on this site discuss areas, services, language, and patterns — never individual studios as recommendations.

This index excludes curated "best of" roundups by design. If such an evaluation appears, it contradicts our core methodology and will be corrected.

How data is collected and updated

Studio data comes from several sources, in roughly this priority:

1. Google Maps, for addresses, coordinates, opening hours, and basic contact details.
2. Studios' own public profiles on Instagram, LINE, TikTok, and Facebook, for accurate names, current LINE IDs, and operating status.
3. Public review platforms in Thailand (for cross-referencing existence and category, not for review content).
4. Direct submissions from studio owners who contact us via the submission link.
5. Reader corrections sent to the contact email.

We do not scrape private accounts. We do not collect contact information of customers. We do not crawl LINE chats or any non-public surface.

Data is reprocessed and updated on a rolling basis. As of the time of writing, the dataset covers around 1,100 studios and around 1,000 individual nailists, across approximately 47 districts of Bangkok. These numbers grow as new studios are found and shrink as closed studios are removed.

If a studio's information on this site is wrong or out of date, the contact link at the bottom of every page reaches us directly. As a single-operator project, corrections are processed manually on a rolling weekly basis; complex cases may take longer.

Pricing data: what we show and why

Prices, when shown, come from the studio's own publicly posted information (Instagram price boards, posted menus, public LINE replies). They are organized into ranges per studio, not into rankings.

If a studio has no publicly posted pricing, we do not estimate it. We do not show "approximately ฿X" based on guesses or area averages, because doing so would either mislead the reader or unfairly anchor the studio. The price field is simply left blank.

This is a deliberate trade-off. Some readers want to know prices for every studio before they message. We would rather show a blank than a number we are not confident in.

The Salons / Nailists distinction

This site maintains two separate indexes:

• Salons — physical, address-located studios. Listed when we can pin them on a map.
• Nailists — individual nail artists discovered through their Instagram presence. Listed when their work is public and they are clearly accepting bookings.

These can overlap. A nailist who works at a particular salon may appear in both indexes — once as a person, once as part of the studio. This is intentional. Bangkok's scene has both kinds of operations, and the same artist can have a personal practice in addition to a salon role.

The reason for the split is practical: salons are best searched by location, individual nailists are best searched by name. Forcing them into one list would weaken both.

Image policy

We host a studio's or nailist's photos only when they have shared them with us for that purpose. We do not take photos from public accounts on our own, and we do not hotlink to Instagram or TikTok images — when a studio shares work for the gallery, we save a copy and serve it from this site, so we never draw on their hosting bandwidth.

This is a change from how the site began. Originally it carried no studio photos at all, because asking every listed studio for image rights is not realistic at this scale. That reasoning still holds — which is why photos are an optional layer, not a requirement. A studio that has not shared photos is mapped on exactly the same basis as one that has. Sharing photos does not move a studio up any list, into any "featured" position, or ahead of anyone. There is no position to move up: the gallery's order is randomised on every visit, and is not a ranking.

Aside from shared studio photos, the only other images on the site are abstract editorial illustrations made for guides, plus the basic site UI.

The same removal rule applies to images as to listings. If you have shared photos and later change your mind — or if you have asked to be removed but something of yours still appears — contact us and we will take it down. Permission to show your photos can be withdrawn at any time, without a reason.

How the site is run and funded

This site is run by one person, based in Bangkok, on a small scale and at a slow pace. There are no advertisers, no sponsored content, no affiliate links, no investors, and no paid placements of any kind. The hosting cost is low — the index is a static site running on Cloudflare Pages — and the project does not currently generate revenue.

The reason it exists is to be useful and, over time, to build something Bangkok's nail-curious community can rely on.

If at some point the site introduces a revenue model, it will be announced openly on this page. The organic editorial index — the alphabetical and area-based lists of studios and nailists — will remain unmanipulated by commercial relationships. Any future promotional surface, if one is ever added, will be distinctly partitioned from the editorial database and explicitly labeled as advertising so that readers can tell at a glance what is editorial and what is paid.

How to request changes or removals

You can:

• Correct your studio's information — wrong address, wrong hours, wrong LINE ID, closed, moved. Contact link at the bottom of every page. Corrections are handled on a rolling weekly basis.
• Update your photos / pricing display — same.
• Request full removal of your studio or your individual nailist listing. We respect your choice to opt out of this index without requiring a business justification. To prevent the malicious removal of valid studios by third parties impersonating their operators, we ask for a basic confirmation that you own or represent the listing — typically a reply from the studio's listed contact email, LINE, or Instagram. Once that is verified, the listing is removed and added to a do-not-relist note. If you change your mind later, contact us and we will reinstate.
• Report a possible breach of the editorial rules above — same contact link. Use it.

There is no form, no account, and no waiting on automated review. The person running the site reads each email.

A closing note

Indexes like this one exist in a fragile space. They can become useful infrastructure, or they can quietly become advertising in disguise. Most do the second eventually, because the second pays.

This page is here partly as a public commitment to the first. Read it again in a year. If the rules on it have changed in ways that move toward selling placement, the change will be on this page, with a note explaining it. If the rules have not changed, the page will look much like this.

Thank you for reading carefully enough to find this page. Most readers do not need to. Some do, and it is for them that it exists.