Tanning Lotions

If you prefer to build up your tan at home, one way to avoid the tanning salon is to use lotions. With the rising concern about the safety of tanning beds, and with most minors being required to have parents consent to their use them, lotions are a safe way to maintain a glow at home. Lotions also come in a foam format with instructions for use on the bottle. The bottles are of different color solutions, so it’s best to try to attempt matching your skin tone with the color advertised on the bottle.

Problems & Precautions

While lotions provide an easy, “do it yourself” benefit for busy people, there are many challenges associated with using a lotion to tan. To begin with, the lotions are applied with the hands, which present a challenge for the color that the hands will turn out. It is not uncommon to achieve a nice glow on the legs only to discover a day later that the tanning solution has soaked into the hands used to apply the lotion. It is very difficult to remove this color from the hands and is unfortunately is a clue to other people that you’ve been experimenting with at-home tanning solutions.

Another common complaint for lotions is that their color is not as natural as the color that can be achieved from a spray or airbrush tan. Many users have complained that the at-home lotions have an orange tint, which does not achieve the desired color once the solution has soaked in and begins to show on the skin. One way to test this is by trying the solution on a small area of the body a few days in advance to see how your skin takes to the lotion. Wearing gloves, although this may affect the overall application, can battle the “orange hand” scenario. If the solution doesn’t provide the color or texture you were hoping for, unfortunately you have wasted your money. The downside of this is that if you were for some reason to have an issue with a spray tan in a salon, they are likely to refund your money or offer you another option.

Bottom Line