My fake tanning routine

Fake tanning was never something I was interested in. I always thought I got a good enough tan if I laid in the British Sun in my back garden. Turns out, I was very very wrong!

With lockdown limiting the amount of the sunlight we get, I thought I’d take the plunge into the fake tan world. I’d been following a tanning brand on Instagram for a while and it looked amazing. This is what the post will be about. As well as sharing my routine, I’ll be reviewing the product that I used.

Prepping

So, the night before, I endure I shave and exfoliate my legs. This makes a smooth canvas for the tan. It’s best to shave the night before as otherwise, the tan can sink into your pores and it can also sting a little upon application. The exfoliator I used was the St.Tropez Prep and maintain polish. It smells like a salon which is great and has little gritty particles in. These prep your skin for application and also remove any traces of tan left on your body for redoing your tan.

Before tanning, I rarely exfoliated my body but now, I’m all here for it! My skin feels so much smoother than just shaving.

On the morning of the day of application, I also moisturise. This helps the tan blend smoothly, especially on drier areas such as elbows and knees. These are places the tan is more likely to cling to. I like to use the Body Shop Body butters as they’re thick and creamy. The reason to applying in the morning is to allow the moisturiser to sink in so it doesn’t affect application.

Application

So the tan I used is the Freshly Baked London Rapid tan in Birthday Cake. It smells of birthday cake! Many people hate the smell of fake tan and now you don’t have to! They also have mango, coconut and baby powder scents too!

The first time, I was a little hesitant, I didn’t use a lot and I only left it on for an hour. Due to it being a rapid tan, they suggest leaving it on for 1-2 hours depending on the depth of colour you want.

For a tanning mitt, I used the St.Moriz velvet tanning mitt. This was kindly gifted to me off my amazon wishlist and it works so well! It was very inexpensive applies my tan so quickly. I also discovered that it doesn’t really absorb too much product which I also know is good. When applying, I rubbed that tan in so much that I didn’t think I could rub in even more.

Opinions on the tan

As I said, my fake tan is Birthday Cake scented which made the whole process really fun. I’m a huge fan of all things vanilla scented which you may realise on my post of all my favourite body-care products.

The packaging is also very cute, it’s decorated with sprinkles and the logo is pink, and if you didn’t know, pink is my favourite colour.

It was £14 for 200ml which is pretty good for a fake tan, especially as fast-working one.

Another cute touch is that they included one of those signs that you can hang on the door handle. It’s very cute and it said “Do not enter, baking in progress.”

Results

When I first applied it, I thought it wasn’t making much of a difference. Since I was new to it all, I assumed it was normal. After an hour however, I still wasn’t too impressed with how deep my tan was. Despite this, I still washed it off as it was getting late and I was too cautious to sleep in it.

Because the tan was quite inexpensive, I wasn’t too upset as I hadn’t paid a lot for it. Sure it was annoying, but, it wasn’t the end of the world.

The next morning, I didn’t even check the tan until I was changing into my workout clothes. Oh my goodness- what a tan! I was so shocked, I looked like I’d just spent two weeks in the Spanish sun! My mum even complimented it and said how natural it looked. This is huge as my mum is a big fan of natural tans!

It gave beautiful results and I was so happy with it!

What else is good to know about this particular fake tan?

Now, I have read so many posts about people’s fake tan sweating off the night after they did their routine. For me, this wasn’t the case. I’m not sure if it’s because they use one that needs to be developed over night but I didn’t sweat mine off at all.

It dries down quick! Not so quick that you need to rub it in as quickly as possible, but quick enough that you don’t have to avoid all furniture for ages. My fake tan routine overall takes about 10 minutes because I make sure I over-rub everywhere so I get no streaks at all!

You can wear white the day after! Yes you heard right! The day after I washed it off, I wore a white Hollister t-shirt. Granted, it was quite loose but still. When I took it off, there were no orange marks inside, and it emphasised my tan. As for my denim skirt that’s a little tighter fitting, there was no marks on that either which is great.

Finally, if you didn’t gather from the above paragraph, it develops over night so don’t worry about not getting your desired colour immediately. After you wake, you’ll have the same colour you get after a week away in sun!

It may be the first tan I tried but I don’t see myself switching it up.

What’s your go-to tan?