You slather on a white cream, wait for a little while and voilá! – you turn bronze. How do these modern marvels work? According to the American Academy of Dermatology, an effective self-tanning product should contain DHA (dihydroxyacetone) as its main ingredient. DHA is actually a sugar, usually refined from sugar beets or sugar cane, and it interacts with keratin proteins in the outermost layer of the skin (called the stratum corneum) to produce a color change. The color will last from five to seven days from the time of application, but for best results you should re-apply every three days or so to maintain the tan. Every day, millions of dead skin cells are sloughed away from your skin’s surface (fun fact: every thirty-five to forty-five days, you have an entirely new epidermis). As these dead cells wear away, so does your fake tan.
The main problem with sunless tanning creams used to be their hideous orange tint. Too much, and you wouldn’t look tan but tangerine. Then in the late 1980s, scientists came up with a better refining process, yielding a higher-quality DHA. The result: a browner, more natural-looking tan … no more orange. Presently, one of the biggest complaints about sunless tanning creams tends to be that you can end up with streaks – but thanks to the introduction of tinted creams, you can actually see where you’ve applied it, thereby making it more difficult to wind up with a streaky tan.
However, no matter how easy contemporary self-tanning methods have been made, there are still a few guidelines to follow to make sure that you get the best results. Use the following steps to ensure that you get a flawless and realistic looking application:
Allow yourself plenty of time.
If you’ll be following these instructions to a tee (be sure to read them thoroughly before beginning), it will take you approximately two hours before you’ll be ready to get dressed again, so make sure you’ve allowed yourself ample “tanning time.” To really take good care of your skin, apply sunscreen during the day and wait until the evening to apply sunless tanner; they don’t contain sunscreen, so if you apply and then go out in the sunlight, you’re not protected from the harmful rays. It’s best to do it a couple of hours before you go to bed.