Beauty Investigation · 6 min read

Why Every Fake Tan Makes Sun Spots Darker After 50 (And the One Kind That Doesn't)

It isn't the sun, and it isn't your age. It's a chemical reaction happening on your shins every time you tan, and almost nobody explains it.

Lynette Whitfield · Senior Beauty Editor
Updated this week

If you're over 50 and you tan your legs, you've probably noticed the pattern before anyone named it for you.

Every summer, the spots look darker.

Not more of them, necessarily. Darker. The ones on your shins come up like freckles someone drew on with a marker. The skin around your ankles goes orange. The little purple veins behind your knees somehow stand out more after the tan than before it.

So you do what everyone tells you. You go a shade darker to hide them. And next summer they look worse again.

When AURA asked its customers what they'd tried before, almost one in three described this exact thing, in their own words:

Over the last month we spoke with women who'd lived this for a decade, and heard about the one question a reader was finally asked at a skin check. Here's what's actually going on.

"I did everything they told me"

The women we spoke to had not been careless. Most had done more than the rest of us.

Sunscreen every morning. A hat in every car. A skin check every year. Some had spots frozen off. Some paid for IPL or laser and watched the spots fade for a season, then come back.

And to cover them in the meantime, they tanned. Bondi Sands. The Dove gradual. Spray tans. Leg makeup that came off on the couch and the car seat.

"I wore stockings to my niece's wedding," one told us. "Thirty-four degrees. I told everyone I feel the cold."

Another reader, 61, from Brisbane, had seen two dermatologists, her GP and her beautician about her legs in two years. She heard the same four things: they're just sun spots, wear your sunscreen, laser them, or go a shade darker.

Then, at a routine skin check, a new doctor leaned in with her light and asked something nobody had asked her before.

"What are you tanning them with?"

The reaction nobody explains

Almost every self-tan on the shelf, gradual or express, mousse or lotion, uses the same active: synthetic DHA.

DHA doesn't sit on your skin like makeup. It reacts with the top layer of your skin, and that reaction is what makes the brown. Here's the part that matters after 50:

1. A sun spot already holds more pigment than the skin around it. So when the tan reacts, it reacts harder on the spot. The spot comes out darker than it was before you put anything on. Every week you tan, you're darkening it again.
2. Your shins and ankles are drier than they used to be. Dry skin soaks up more tan. That's why it goes patchy and orange on the bony bits, however carefully you apply.
3. Nothing in a bottle covers a vein. So when the skin around a vein gets darker, the vein stands out more, not less.

"Every one of those bottles was made for a 25-year-old's legs," the doctor told our reader. "Not one of them was made for yours."

It explains the pattern exactly. The sun started it. The tan has been making it look worse every week since.

Why "just use a gradual tan" doesn't fix it

This is the advice most women get next, and it's the one that keeps them stuck.

A gradual tan is simply less DHA, built up over several days. Less of the same reaction is still the same reaction. It darkens the spots more slowly, but it still darkens them. That's why the Dove gradual "was okay at first, then it darkened the sun spots too."

Going back to white legs isn't the answer either. On older skin, pale legs show every vein and blotch even more.

So the doctor wrote three things on the back of an appointment card. If you tan over sun spots, this is the checklist:

• No synthetic DHA, so there's nothing for the spots to grab.
• Develops slowly, overnight, so the colour settles evenly over dry skin instead of soaking into it.
• No brown guide colour, so you get an even warmth the veins go quiet against, and nothing ends up on your sheets.

"Most of what's at the chemist won't tick any of these," she said.

She was right. Check the back of the bottle in your bathroom. You'll almost certainly find DHA (dihydroxyacetone) near the top of the list.

The one we found that ticks all three

The tan our readers kept coming back to is AURA, by MÁTERNA, a small company that makes it for exactly this.

• No synthetic DHA. The active comes from organic sugar beet.
• It develops slowly, overnight, not in an hour like an express tan, so the colour settles evenly.
• It goes on white, like a light moisturiser. No brown guide colour, no smell, dry in about fifteen minutes, nothing on the sheets.

It's made for women over 50 with sun spots and spider veins. That's who it's for, and you can tell from the first night.

What happens when you switch

Here's what the women we spoke to described, and what you can expect.

"I walked to the letterbox in shorts and only realised once I was back inside," one reader told us. "That hadn't happened since I was 52."

The questions every woman asks

P.S. Before you put anything on your legs tonight, squeeze a little on your palm. If it comes out brown, that's guide colour, and the DHA is underneath it. AURA comes out white.

UPDATE: Several readers asked about shades. AURA comes in Fair and Medium. If you've never tanned before, start with Fair. The bundle includes your extra shade free.

This is an advertorial. Individual results vary. AURA is a cosmetic self-tanner. It does not remove, treat or prevent sun spots, spider veins or any skin condition, and it is not a sunscreen. See your doctor about any spot that changes.