Skin Types and DHA
It is a known fact that if you put 6 people in the same sun for the same length of time at the same time of day, they will all react differently.
For this reason you need to have a good understanding of how the different levels of DHA (Dihydroxyacetone) work with different skin types.
As you can see from the chart below, if it normally takes your client up to 7-days of sitting in the sun each day for about 1 to 2 hours to get a tan, then trying to get the same result from one application is an unrealistic expectation.
One way to work out how DHA works with different skin types is too imagine DHA working in much the same way as the ‘sun’.
| Skin Type 5/6 | Skin Type 3/4 | Skin Type 2/3 | Skin Type 1/2 |
Time in Sun | 1/2 days | 2/3 days | | |
Time in Sun | | | 4/5 days | |
Time in Sun | | | | 5/7 days |
DHA % | 12% | 10% | 8% | 5% |
Imagine those 6 people in the sun; after two hours one or two fair skinned people will probably turn red, their skin may blister and peel and eventually revert back to fair skin.
Another one or two less fair skinned people may turn red initially but eventually their skin would develop a light tan; and another one or two olive skinned people may simply develop a lasting tan.
People react in similar ways with solarium tanning, some fair skinned people are unable to turn brown no matter how many times they use them and overuse may simply cause them to turn red and maybe even blister.
As with the sun people with different skin types call for a different strength of Sunless Solutions. The Fitzpatrick Skin Type Scale is a skin classification system first developed in 1975 by Thomas Fitzpatrick, MD, of Harvard Medical School. His skin classifications and its adaptation are familiar to dermatologists. It is a very useful scale that is used very often in solarium tanning salons to determine how much UV exposure the skin can take. It is also very useful in spray tanning to customise the spray tan and optimise the final tan.
Using this guide, ask your clients how they react in the sun. That should give you a good idea which solution should work best for each client.
What is happening is their skin isn't able to absorb that much sun in one go and so the skin goes red until the tan is absorbed, unless you are Skin Type 1 which is likely to just go back to pale. It's more or less the same for clients being spray tanned. Their skin isn't able to absorb the DHA quickly and so the 'dreaded' 'orangisation' occurs until the skin can fully absorb the DHA.
And finally, remember when your clients have been sprayed, to advise them that what they are looking at is the colour of the bronzer, their actual tan won't have begun to develop. This way you can avoid the pitfalls of the 'can you make it darker' plea.
As with the sun, if clients wan't a darker tan, then tell them to come back the next day and get a re-spray.