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For ten summers I thought it was a question of time. It was a question of whether my skin answered.
Three weeks away, a litre of coconut oil, and I came home exactly the colour I left.
Well, almost. There was the red of the first two days, the peeling on the fourth, and at the end that tired beige that looks like nothing at all. Meanwhile my friend, who had not spent one minute more outside than me, was golden by day three.
Let me say this straight away: I am not about to tell you to stay out in the sun for longer. I am about to tell you the opposite. And the sunscreen does not move: it stays exactly where it is, every day, over the top of everything else.
It took me years to work out that I did not have a sun-time problem, I had a response problem. The sun does not make the colour, your melanocytes do, cells that sit inside the skin. The sun only gives the order. When your skin answers it badly, you can spend the whole summer out there: you burn before you brown. And in this country, pushing harder is not an option.
I was not looking for a fake tan. I had done my time: rust-coloured elbows, streaky knees, the smell that comes back the moment it gets warm, and that handprint on the pale couch that never really came out. I wanted my own skin to do the work, just with far fewer hours outside.
That is when I came across a cream that does not colour the skin. It talks to it.
The whole thing sits in one molecule, oleoyl tyrosine. It reaches the melanocytes and switches the melanin pathway on while I am in the sun.
It is not a colour applied to your skin. It is your own, activated at the source.
I started on a Saturday in September. One hour in the morning, sunscreen over the top, then I went home. Three days later the swimmer line was already sharp.
That jar was the Solambra Tanning Booster. Here are the seven reasons I never go out in the sun without it now.
I am putting this one before all the others, because it is the question everyone here asks first, and it is a fair one. The Booster does not ask you to stay out longer. It exists so that you need far less time out there.
When your skin answers better, it gets to the same place in half the time. In practice, I no longer settle in for the afternoon. One hour in the morning, and I head home.
To be clear about it: this is a cosmetic, it offers no protection from UV, and sunscreen goes on top, every single time.
I stopped negotiating with the sun. I simply ask it for much less.
A fake tan always shows. On the wrist, at the hairline, on your nails, in the crease of the elbow. Nobody says anything, but everybody sees it.
Here there is nothing to spot, because there is nothing sitting on top. It is my own melanin doing the work, simply woken up properly. The colour follows the shape of a face and a body the way a real tan does, because that is what it is.
My skin stopped imitating a tan. It makes one.
Fair skin, freckles, blonde hair. All my life I was told I was “not built for tanning”, and in this country that mostly means you burn while everyone else goes golden.
It is not true, and the truth is the opposite: fair skin is not short of sun, it is short of a response. Switch the melanin pathway on and the same hours finally build a colour instead of nothing at all. Your starting point changes where you land, not whether you get there.
I was never a skin that does not tan. I was a skin nobody had woken up.
Four actives do the work: oleoyl tyrosine, which switches the melanin pathway on, then shea butter, squalane and hyaluronic acid, which feed the skin while the colour builds.
The full list is published on the product page, and that has become something I check. I was not after a product that colours my skin for me. I was after one that tells my skin to do it.
The colour is not in the jar. It is in my skin.
I know the list by heart, because I lived it. The patches on day three. The pillowcase fit for the bin. The smell that rises the moment it gets warm. The white singlet written off.
None of that exists here. The golden tint you see going on is only a guide, and it rinses off. What stays behind is made inside the skin: it does not transfer, it does not smell, and it does not come away in patches.
I no longer have anything to protect from my own colour.
The whole ritual is four steps, at the moment you head out. The fourth one is not optional.
The whole thing takes less time than putting on my day cream.
This is the change I least saw coming. For years my Thursday nights were organised around a fake tan: scrub, apply, sleep in it, rinse it off in the morning, do the whole thing again six days later. A colour you had to keep remaking, because it left with your dead skin.
Here the colour is in the skin, and the shea, squalane and hyaluronic acid keep that skin supple all season. Nothing flakes, so nothing takes the colour with it. Out of the sun, two or three applications a week on already tanned skin are enough to keep it going.
I got my Thursday nights back. And the colour stayed.
Three jars, which is three months of the ritual, at $39.93 a jar. Start today and it carries you through to the first beach weekends.
4.7/5 from 30 verified reviews.Average rating for the Booster
Start the ritualThe questions our customer care team hears most often.
No, and it is the most important question on this page, so here is a straight answer. The Booster exists to get you a colour with less exposure, not more.
It does not protect you from UV, it does not replace sunscreen, and it does not make the sun harmless. What it changes is how much time your colour costs you.
Completely normal, and it washes off. The skin on the palms is thicker and holds far more of the guide tint than the rest of the body. Run your hands under the tap straight after you apply. Rinse the hands only, never the areas you want to tan.
No, that is exactly how it is meant to behave. The golden tint you see going on is only a guide, so you can tell where you have applied it. That is not the colour. The colour is the one your skin built during the exposure, and that one does not rinse away.
No. The guide tint you see on application rinses off, and the colour that stays is made inside the skin, so it cannot transfer. Just give it about ten minutes to settle before you get dressed, the same as you would with sunscreen.
Give it at least ten minutes to settle before any long contact with water. If you are heading to the beach, put it on before you leave the house rather than on the sand.
No. It is the comment that comes back most often in the reviews, including from women who had given up on self-tanners for that exact reason. The texture is rich, it sinks into the skin and does not leave that smell that rises again at the end of the day.
From the first few sessions for the healthy-glow effect. Allow two to three weeks of the ritual for a settled tone, even and warm.
No. The Booster is a cosmetic and offers no protection from UV. Sunscreen goes on top, every single time, and gets reapplied every two hours.
No, and it is the one mistake worth avoiding. The formula is ultra concentrated: the right dose gives the right tone, a generous dose gives an orange cast and skin that feels tacky. A thin veil is enough, and it is also what makes the jar last.
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