Sun Spots and Spider Veins? Here's Every Way Aussie Women Tried to Cover Them, Ranked. Stick Around for the One That Actually Worked.
Sun spots down your shins. Spider veins behind your knees. And a wardrobe that has slowly crept down to your ankles.
If that's you, you've almost certainly tried to fix it. Most women our age have tried the same four things, in roughly the same order:
- Covering up. Long pants in January. A hemline that gets a little longer every year.
- Leg makeup. Lovely for an evening, then it's on the couch.
- A quick tan or a spray tan. Orange knees, streaky ankles, and the smell.
- A gentle gradual lotion. Slower, but the dark spots still came out darker.
And when none of them worked, most of us decided the same thing: our skin was just too old for tan.
It isn't. When MÁTERNA shared the replies from their customer survey with me, nearly 1 in 4 women had said, without being asked, that the tanners they'd tried made their legs look worse. That isn't bad technique. It's a pattern, and there's a reason for it.
You're Not the Only One
Sun spots came first. Spider veins were a close second, and a good number of women named both.
Source: MÁTERNA post-purchase survey, October 2026 (44 replies so far).
But the answers that stayed with me weren't about skin. They were about clothes.
“I haven't worn shorts or dresses for years. I won't look at my legs.”
“I love my shorts but won't wear them out.”
Several still owned their shorts. They just wore them where nobody could see.
Why the Tanners Made It Worse
Here's how they put it, in their own words.
“Fake tan makes my brown spots darker and my spider veins stand out.”
“Tried tanning but it just darkened the spots and made them more obvious.”
For years I put that down to bad application. Not exfoliating. Using too much. It turns out they hadn't done anything wrong.
Almost every self-tanner on the shelf uses the same active, synthetic DHA. It doesn't sit on your skin like makeup. It reacts with the top layer of your skin to make the colour.
On young, even skin, that comes out even. But a sun spot already holds more pigment, so it comes out darker. Dry skin grabs more product. And nothing in the bottle covers a vein, so it stands out against the darker skin around it.
Once you know that, the rest of the survey reads very differently. Here is every solution these women tried, from the one that helped least to the one that came out on top.
#5 — Covering Up
This was the most common answer of all, and it isn't really a solution. It's what's left when the others have failed. Long pants in January. A hemline that gets a little longer every year.
“Always wear pants or a long dress so no one sees my legs.”
“Shorts only at home.”
I understand it. But it means your legs decide what you wear, every single summer.
❌ It works, and it costs you shorts and dresses every summer.
#4 — Leg Makeup
For one evening, leg makeup does what it promises. Several women said it was the first thing that made their legs look even.
Then they sat down.
“It always rubbed onto my clothing and furniture.”
“It was very cakey.”
❌ Covers for an evening, then it's on everything.
#3 — Mousse, Quick Tans and Spray Tans
This is the one most of us have under the bathroom sink, and it drew the strongest words in the whole survey.
“A lot of brands. Results: orange.”
“Blotchy, smelly self-tanners!”
On a 25-year-old it looks lovely. On skin with sun spots, the colour lands hardest exactly where you don't want it. And the brown guide colour that shows you where you've put it is the part that ends up on your sheets.
❌ Orange, smelly, and the guide colour ends up on your sheets.
#2 — Gradual Tanning Lotion
I had high hopes for this one, and so did they. It's gentle, it's inexpensive and it builds slowly. For a woman with even skin, it's a perfectly good answer.
“It made my pigmentation whiter and my dark spots darker.”
“It was okay, but it doesn't cover bad sun damage.”
But it's the same active in a moisturiser. The women with the most sun damage found it did what the mousse did, only more politely.
❌ Comes closest, and still makes the dark spots darker.
Before I show you what came out on top, take 20 seconds. This will tell you why the ones you tried let you down.
1. What bothers you most about your legs?
2. What have you stopped wearing?
3. What have you tried so far?
By this point in the replies, I'd nearly written off the whole idea of tanning over sun spots. Then I read what they said about the one they'd bought last.
