My face is naturally darker than my body despite me using a ton of sunscreen, so I’ve been fake tanning in an effort to stop me from looking like a mime artist. But now I’ve gone too far and my body is usually a shade darker. While I could just use fake tan on my face, it feels wrong to use a body product there, like I’m just asking for a breakout, plus fake tan works best right on the skin and gradual tans are usually quite thick in texture. So I’ve been testing out some lighter products purposely designed for the face instead: Tan-Luxe The Face Raspberry & Rose Self-Tan Drops, Hylamide Glow Balance Booster and St Tropez Luxe Facial Tanning Oil. For comparison, I’ve also included Hand Chemistry which I’ve reviewed before, since I mostly used it on my face.

General notes

The main ingredients in self-tanners are dihydroxyacetone (DHA) and erythrulose (often referred to as fruit ketone). They work much like the browning reaction that happens when cooking food. This reaction works best at low, skin-friendly pH values.
- Dihydroxyacetone has a bad reputation because of older versions where impure DHA caused the reaction to go more of an unnatural orange than yellow.
- Erythrulose is a newer fake tan ingredient that’s a bit larger than DHA, so it works slower but penetrates deeper and you end up with a more gradual tan that lasts longer. (Erythrulose was developed by someone who reads Lab Muffin – hello Roland if you’re reading this!)
None of these are really “oils”, even when labelled as such – dihydroxyacetone and erythrulose are both water-soluble, so they’ll be in a mixture that’s mostly water.
Most of these contain lots of humectants to counteract the drying effect that dihydroxyacetone and erythrulose.
Make sure you wash your hands with soap after application! Fake tanner ingredients stick harder to dead skin, so you fingertips are really prone to staining.
By the same token, make sure you don’t apply these products on dry patches of skin. Either avoid those spots, or apply a moisturiser on them to prevent patchy staining.

Tan-Luxe The Face Raspberry & Rose Self-Tan Drops

Tan-Luxe The Face Raspberry & Rose Self-Tan Drops (available from TVSN if you’re from Australia) is a product that’s designed to mix in with your regular cream or serum. You can add as many drops to adjust to the shade you want.

It’s $74.95 for a 30 mL bottle on TVSN which is on the pricey side, but you also end up using less product since you’ll only be using a few (2-3) drops each time. I only ever use 2 drops max, since I don’t want to wake up like an oompa loompa (yes, it will turn you orange if you don’t proceed with caution!). It’s mixed well with all the water-based serums and moisturisers I’ve used so far, but I expect that it doesn’t work that well with oilier products.

I found that it was quite easy to stuff up while applying this and end up streaky. Make sure you mix the tan drops evenly into your cream on your hand, and make sure you also apply it very evenly.

Scent-wise, it stands up to the claim that it doesn’t smell too strongly like DHA, but it’s still detectable. The product alone has a strong raspberry scent that I found a little offputting, but once diluted into a cream it was quite nice. It contains a few nourishing ingredients – glycerin, raspberry seed oil, rose geranium oil, vitamin E and aloe vera – but the fact you only use a few drops means they aren’t as effective. Just make sure you use a good moisturiser with it.

Ingredients: Aqua (Water), Dihydroxyacetone, Alcohol Denat. (Alcohol), Glycerin, Erythrulose, Rubus Idaeus (Raspberry) Seed Oil, Pelargonium Graveolens (Rose Geranium) Oil, Tocopheryl Acetate, Aloe Barbadensis (Aloe) Leaf Juice, Hydrolyzed Silk, Caramel, Polysorbate 80, Xanthan Gum, Parfum (Fragrance), Limonene, Geraniol, Hexyl Cinnamal, Benzyl Salicylate, Butylphenyl Methylpropional, Sodium Hydroxide, Benzoic Acid, Phenoxyethanol, Dehydroacetic Acid.

St Tropez Gradual Tan In-Shower Lotion (Golden Glow Medium)

St Tropez Gradual Tan In-Shower Lotion is an innovative tan that’s rinse-off – it incorporates a bunch of penetration enhancers that get enough of the tanning agents to sink into your skin in 3 minutes that you’ll see the effects hours later, when the deposited ingredients have had time to react. You apply it to your clean damp skin at the end of a shower. After 3 minutes (during which you should wash your hands if you don’t want orange hand syndrome), you rinse it off and pat dry and you’re done.

Fake Tan reviews: St Tropez In-Shower Tan and Hand Chemistry Glow Oil

Ingredients: Aqua (Water), Dihydroxyacetone, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Diethylhexyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Glycerin, Decyl Glucoside, Ethoxydiglycol, Sodium Acrylate/Sodium Acryloyldimethyl Taurate Copolymer, Parfum (Fragrance), Propylene Glycol, Sodium Chloride, Phenoxyethanol, Coco-Glucoside, Glyceryl Oleate, Isohexadecane, Pentaerythrityl Tetra-Di-t-Butyl Hydroxyhydrocinnamate, Glyceryl Laurate, PEG-18 Glyceryl Oleate/Cocoate, Polysorbate 80, Caramel, Hydrolyzed Jojoba Esters, Melanin, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Decylene Glycol, Caprylyl Glycol, Sodium Hydroxide, Geraniol, Linalool, Limonene, Alpha-isomethyl Ionone, Coumarin.

The In-Shower Lotion contains the usual dihydroxyacetone (DHA) as the main tanning agent (check out this post for the chemistry behind how DHA causes tanning), as well as erythrulose, which can undergo a similar reaction (but less intensely) to give a more natural overall look. The featured ingredients for pushing the DHA into your skin are hydrolysed jojoba esters. Sweet almond oil also makes an appearance as a moisturising agent, since well-hydrated skin tans better and fades more evenly too. There’s also a special fragrance incorporated into this product from the huge fragrance house Givaudan. St Tropez claims “the notes that work well with the DHA… the DHA is brought into the fragrance and concealed, making it undetectable”. It acts as a mood enhancer as well. I found that I could still smell a distinctive smell while the tan was developing, but it wasn’t exactly DHA smell – it was very similar, but more pleasant.

This product is really made with lazy people in mind (hello!). Combined with water remaining on my skin from the shower, it has the texture of a runny, slightly bubbly conditioner and is very easy to spread with my hands, especially since you don’t really need an even layer. It’s also awesome that you can put your clothes on immediately afterwards without feeling sticky or waiting around, and the lotion is hydrating enough to double up as moisturiser. However, a word of warning: make sure you rinse it all off – run your hands over all your skin. Don’t do what I did and forget to rinse off your feet, you’ll end up with an accidental tattoo.

I tried this out in Thailand where it’s been around 30 °C, and standing around waiting was completely fine (I did a hair mask during this time too), but I’m hesitant to try this now that I’m back in winter mode, since freezing naked and slippery in the shower is not how I envisioned my death.