Category: News

Are you wondering when to shower after a spray tan? Does your colour guide look too dark and your panicking that your going to turn out THAT ACTUAL COLOUR!

To answer that question, it really depends on the type of spray tan you had applied. By what type of spray tan, we mean the brand and wither or not it was a standard ‘9 hour development tan’, or the latest innovation in spray tanning, the ‘express tan’.

9 Hour Development Spray Tan 

This is the standard spray tan that you will be used to receiving at your local spray tan salon. It usually takes 9 hours to development to the shade you chose, but some take 12 hours. The salon you had your spray tan applied in will probably let you know how long you are to leave your colour guide on. The colour guide is the brown spray that is left on your skin after the tan has been applied.

In this development time you are responsible for making sure you don’t damage the colour guide till it’s time to shower. That means no washing your hands, spilling drinks or going to the gym. If you do damage the colour guide you might risk the tan looking uneven. For example, if you spill some water on your arm, the colour guide will wash off that area causing it to not develop as much as the rest of the body.

Once your 9 hours is up, you can wash your colour guide off in the shower. Wash your tan off with pure water in the shower, which means no soap or shampoo. If you are looking at your spray tan, and you think – “my word this is really bloody brown”, don’t worry, it’s just a colour guide so your therapist doesn’t miss a bit. You’ll end up just as brown as what you asked for. If however your really worried about it developing too dark, just wash it off in half the time and you’ll be half as brown!

Express, 1 Hour or Rapid Spray Tan

The Express, 1 hour or rapid spray tan, are all the same thing. Basically these tans get to work faster, meaning you can shower them off before you go out or go to bed. This is rather convenient when life is busy, or your asked to come in for a shift at work!

It works like this: 1 hour for light, 2 hours for medium, 3 hours for dark or keep going for even darker.

Once you wash this type of spray tan off, you will be brown but you’ll be even browner the next day. The thing is, even though your able to wash it off, it still takes 9 hours to develop into the shade you wanted.

Don’t damage your tan till you wash it off, and try to wear loose clothing after you’ve washed it off as well. That means no jeans, leggings or tight bras. Avoid perfume on bare skin till the next day.

Australian Gold spray tan is one of the most popular and well known spray tan solutions in the world because it it’s natural, golden tones. 

Australian gold gets it’s name from it’s striking resemblance to a natural, golden Australian tan without the skin damage. Here’s just some of the benefits to the Australian Gold spray tan:

• Natural, golden brown colour
• Absolutely no orange tones
• Even and streak free
• Drip-free mist
• Dries almost instantly
• Alcohol free (Non-drying on the skin)
• One of the few Organic property spray tans available
• Invigorating citrus scent
• Comes in a range of shades from light up to extra dark
• Highly moisturising ingredients including Aloe Vera
• Enriched with anti-oxidant Vitamins A, E & C

How dark is the Australian Gold spray tan?

Any shade of colour can be achieved with Australian Gold spray tanning. From light, medium, medium to dark, dark to extra dark, discuss your preferred shade with your Australian Gold spray tan therapist.

The importance of a non alcohol based spray tan

Australian Gold spray tans, along with a few other premium brands don’t have any alcohol in their ingredients list. This is very important as alcohol dries the skin, leading to cracked, scaly looking spray tans. An alcohol free spray tan such as Australian Gold allows your skin to remain moisturised and even more so with it’s highly potent Aloe Vera ingredients too.

How is Australian Gold Spray Tan Applied?

Australian Gold spray tan is applied just like other spray tans, using an airbrush gun by a spray tan therapist. At our spray tan studio, we manually spray tan our clients in our drying booth. This means that your skin will feel and look instantly dry after  your therapist has finished the treatment.

The answer is yes, if you want lighter legs and a seam line on your inner thigh and ankle! Leggings, jeans and any tight fitting clothes after a spray tan is completely taboo! This is because tight clothes are hard to get on which results in your tan getting rubbed of before you even get them off!

Once you finally get your legs into them, you’ll be wearing them either all day or till you get home which means that every moment you move the tan is slowly rubbing off while making your legs lighter than the rest of your body the next day. The seam line going up the inner thigh on leggings and jeans will be rubbing against your spray tan and will cause a darker line there.

So how did I prove this theory? 

It’s common knowledge that tight clothing shouldn’t be worn after tanning, but I wanted to find out for myself. I put on a dark spray tan and after application I put on a pair of slightly lose cut off jeans. After the 9 hour development time I washed off the colour guide and saw that half my leg was tanned and the other half was lighter where the jeans had been off. See for yourself in the picture below!

So what do I wear after a spray tanning session?

On the bottom:

Loose joggy bottoms, harrem pants, slouch pants, loose shorts or maxi skirts.

On the top:

no strappy tank tops! Where a loose fitting t-shirt that’s easy to get into after your spray tanning session. If in doubt, try it on before you arrive to see how easy it is.

If your anything like us, you will want your spray tan to last as long as possible. There’s nothing better than being sprayed every week with a fresh spray tan. That’s why you want your tan to last at least a week, but you also want it to fade evenly and come off easily.

At Tropicoco beauty salon, we avoid the sunbed tanning salons at all costs, and so do our customers. That’s because we don’t want to worry about the risk of skin cancer and premature ageing when we can have a safe and quick spray tan each week. Just like a tan from the sun or sunbed tanning salons, your spray tan will fade when your skin regenerates itself and the old skin cells fall off to reveal your paler skin beneath. 

Ingredients

Every spray tan solution will have different ingredients inside it, and it’s these ingredients that will have the biggest impact on how long your spray tan will last. When you hit your local spray tanning salon, ask your spray tan therapist if the spray tan solution the salon uses has alcohol as an ingredient. Although were partial to a Bellini or four, alcohol is not good for your spray tan. Alcohol is very drying for the skin, and it can therefore irritate your skin leaving it unbearably itchy. Not only will the drying effect of alcohol make your tan look cracked or ‘scaly’, the need to scratch your itchy skin will make the tan come off.

A good spray tanning salon will also know that their spray tanning solution needs to have good moisturising ingredients inside. A good example of this is Moroccan Tan, a premium brand with Moroccan oil in it, well known for it’s moisturising qualities.

A good quality brand of spray tan solution will also use premium DHA. DHA is the prime ingredient in spray tans, it’s what turns you that glorious bronze colour, but if you use a cheap brand you could end up orange. A premium quality spray tan brand will apply brown and stay brown for the duration of the week, but a cheap one will be brown on application, but gradually change to an orange hue after a few days.

The Therapist

An inexperienced spray tan therapist and spray tan customer might be under the misconception that the more layers of spray tan applied to the skin, the darker they will be. The truth is that although your spray tanner may be charging you double the price for two layers, you might be a slight bit darker than usual, but your tan will look cracked on the first few days.

This is because of DHA overload, let’s explain; Once DHA is applied to the skin, it reacts and turns the top layer of your skin brown, but DHA isn’t designed to react with another layer of DHA, therefore it doesn’t make any difference to the depth of colour. Instead, you should ask your spray tanning salon to give you a higher percentage spray tan. This way you can get the colour you desire without feeling wet and sticky with all those layers of spray tan on.

What you can do to prolong your spray tan

Ex-foliate

Ex-foliating before your spray tan makes sure the dead skin cells that are about to slide off your body come off before your spray tan is applied. If you don’t ex-foliate you risk the spray tan solution lying on your tanned dead skin cells and shedding a few days later. Ex-foliating with a mitt or face cloth is best.

Moisturise

One of the biggest spray tanning companies in the world, St. Tropez, have discovered that Aloe Vera moisturisers are best for prolonging your spray tan. They also recommend that you should avoid using oily moisturisers as oil strips tan off your skin.

You will probably have more luck finding the right moisturiser in a store that has lots of choice such as House of Fraser or Debhenams.

Water

Quick showers are best when you want your spray tan to last, but long showers and baths are best when you want it off. You know how easy it is to clean dishes once they’ve been soaked in warm water for a lengthy period? Well the same thing happens when you go for a long bath after a spray tan. Bathing in hot, soapy water will soften your skin and make your spray tan easier to rub off.

After you’ve been in for a shower, make sure you pat dry with a towel rather than rub dry. Rubbing dry with a towel will ex-foliate your skin and cause the spray tan to come off more easily.

 At one point in our life, we have all had a bad spray tan experience. That is why I opened a spray tanning salon, because I was once a regular customer that found it hard to find somewhere that guaranteed a good spray tan that ticked all the boxes every time.

That’s when Tropicoco was born. I spent numerous hours researching and trailing different spray tan solutions and deliberating such things as which one has the best fade off, or which lasts the longest. Finally I reached a decision and I haven’t looked back since. The brand I use (which remains a secret that I will clutch with my bony tan hands in the grave) ticks every box for myself, and more importantly for my customers. 

Working in the tanning industry has made me realise something, people are scared. They fear the orange, they fear the reptile like fade off and biscuity smell that their boyfriend so gladly points out after tan day. This fear has encouraged the ladies of Glasgow to do what most skin specialists would cringe at, and that is the harmful use of sunbeds to get a tan.

Like most of my customers, being healthy and looking good is imperative, which means they are the type of people to avoid using sunbeds due to cancer risk and premature ageing. Luckily, with numerous months of research and training, I was able to find a spray tan for them that meant they could be beautifully bronzed with no fear of being orange, sticky, smelly and patchy!

Here’s some spray tan myths I’ve come across:

Some Spray Tans Have Turned Me Green

We’ve all heard that one story where a friend of a friend turned completely Shrek green after a spray tan. After something like that happens we tend to blame the brand of spray tan, but in fact, it’s the salons fault. The main ingredient in spray tan is extracted from food products such as sugar beats, therefore just like food, if it isn’t stored correctly, it goes off. Once out of date, the tan will turn an olive green colour and it wont turn your skin very brown.

However, if green appears on your body, but only on certain parts, it hasn’t got anything to do with the spray tanning salon. In fact, if you haven’t washed off deodorants, make-up, perfumes or moisturisers, they will all turn green because they react with the spray tan solution. Not to threat though, once your tan has developed, the green tinge under your arm pits will disappear but remain brown once the colour guide has been washed off.

Spray Tans Make Me Look Scaly

Some spray tans will have a bad fade off, but that is because they are cheap. Cheap solutions don’t have the same moisturisers and ingredients as premium brands, therefore after a few days your tan could end up making you look like a reptile. Cheaper tans require lots of alcohol which is very drying for the skin and that is the very reason we refuse to use any brands with alcohol in it.

Spray Tans Are Wet And Sticky

Just like any product or service on the market, spray tanning equipment and solutions have advanced dramatically over the years. Just like any big company with lots of customers, I would image they sit round a table and discuss the problems with spray tanning and how to improve or eliminate them. This is exactly what must of happened, because several brands that I have trailed this year are more of a dry mist than a wet one.

The type of gun used is always important when it comes to receiving a dry to touch spray tan. A good quality machine will create such a fine mist that it dries almost instantly and evenly.

Spray Tans Smell Like Biscuits and Gravy

Spray tans have come a long way since they arrived in beauty salons, but tan chemists have finally managed to hide that scent even in cheaper brands. However, if you are getting more than a light or medium spray tan, expect a slight biscuity smell for the first day of your tan. The reason for this is because the more DHA (makes you dark) in a solution, the more it will smell of biscuits.

Spray Tans Are Too Light Or Too Dark

Being a frequent spray tan customer, I would walk into a salon and I wouldn’t even be asked what colour I wanted to achieve. I would be given what was there and that just isn’t good enough for a regular tan-oholic. We all have different colourings and what might be right for one person, may not be right for another. A good spray tan therapist will ask you where you are going and what kind of colour you are comfortable with such as light, medium, dark or for those brave enough, extra dark!

 Happy tanning ladies!