Why Indoor Tanning Is Safer Than Sun Tanning

Estimated Time to Read: 3 minutes

To Look Your Best

The summer months are upon us again, and we’re all shaking off our months-long winter blues to get out and be social again. When the months get warm, we want to do as much as we can when we can because we know it won’t always last. So when we want to enjoy those balmy days in the park, or go to a festival, or head to a crowded park or a tourist attraction, we want to look like our best selves, and that involves dressing in style, getting fit, and often times, getting a nice tan using an indoor tanning bed lotion.

A nice, smooth bronze can do wonders for your self-esteem, especially when wearing summer casual clothes that tend to reveal legs and shoulders, where you definitely don’t want to be sporting prominent tan lines. Getting a nice, even tan can often be as simple as taking in a few hour-long sessions at the beach. However, not everyone in this vast land has the luxury of living near a beach or body of water, and the climate you live in may not be ideal for tanning. There may be a lot of overcast days or rain, and the weather is far from predictable. That’s where tanning beds—and indoor tanning bed lotions—come in.

For those in these places who still want to sport smooth, lightly browned skin, what can you do? The answer is to grab your indoor tanning bed lotion and find a local tanning salon (there’s guaranteed to be at least one in every major city). But even for those who do live in places where sunlight is plentiful and a beach is a short drive away, there can be some major health advantages to choosing indoor tanning instead of sun tanning. Here are some reasons why choosing sun tanning over indoor tanning may not be the most safety-conscious choice for you.

Indoor Tanning Bed Lotion vs. Suntan Lotion

In spite of what an idle observer may think, indoor tanning bed lotion and suntan lotion are not interchangeable. Both have properties suited to their respective uses. Indoor tanning bed lotion, for instance, is obviously designed for and safe to use in indoor tanning beds, which have ceramic covers that can be made brittle or easily damaged by running suntan lotions. As well, indoor tanning bed lotions do not have the same sun protection factor (SPF) properties that suntan lotions have, making them ineffective for use in sun tanning.

A major advantage to using indoor tanning bed lotion, however, is that it is designed for protection in short, protracted tanning sessions. This means you can get a deeper and lasting tan in fewer sessions while greatly reducing the odds that you will get a burn, or worse, a lasting skin condition, or possibly cancer.

Measured Tanning Sessions

Unlike sessions in the sun, where the sun may stay out all day, or occasionally experience cloud cover, or the weather could full on change to an unpleasant rain storm, indoor tanning sessions are keenly regulated and timed, and when combined with the use of a protective indoor tanning bed lotion, these timed sessions where the ultraviolet light is regulated greatly reduces the risk of overexposure.These timed sessions mean that there is little chance that you could simply doze off and get too much tan, as is often the case with beach tanning.

Indoor Tanning Is a Regulated Industry

Sun tanning is truly an act of free whim. All you really need is exposed skin, a sunny day, and time. But there is no one seeing to it that you buy the proper lotion, or any regulation of the ultraviolet intake of sunlight, or any restrictions on how long you can keep yourself under the sun for. The industry of indoor tanning, in contrast, is heavily regulated. Salon owners take the safety of their patrons very seriously, and the FDA oversees the activities of the industry, ensuring even indoor tanning bed lotions are all up to snuff.

This regulation leads to the design of proper indoor tanning bed lotions, safety specifications for beds, authorized training for professionals, and the availability of consumer information pertaining to the recommended and unrecommended uses of indoor tanning beds.

The Best Indoor Tanning Bed Lotion

Keeping safe while conducting indoor tanning sessions can be as simple as becoming knowledgeable by doing research, consulting local indoor tanning salons, and purchasing the proper indoor tanning bed lotion from online outlets like Millennium Tanning.