If you've got pale white skin, then you'll know that winter is a time when it becomes nearly translucent. Any semblence of a tan you had left over from summer packs it's bags and heads for south for the winter, refusing to return until temperatures have reached a steady 22 degrees celcius medium.
Basically, if you've got white pale skin, you end up spending winter looking like Colin in The Secret Garden. Sickly.
Now, obviously there are ways to combat this. I for one, use fake tan, mix it with a bit of my normal moisturiser, and go on my merry way. For a lot of people though, fake tan is too much of a commitment, there's too much that could go wrong, the chances of ending up looking like Peter Andre's chest in the* Mysterious Girl* video are just too great.
But how about wash-off fake tan? The sort of stuff that only lasts until you have a wash? That can't be scary right?
We decided to test out three different instant glow, wash off fake face tans to see if any of them could replicate a real tan.
First up, here's me without a chemical tan.
Selfie Tan'n Go Instant Face Bronzer Wash Off Formula
A relative newcomer to the tanning brigade, Selfie are growing super fast. I tried their Gradual Tanner with 24 hour moisturiser in a while back and I can safely say that yep it works as a gradual fake tanner but oh lordy, the moisturising element was better than most normal moisturisers.
Anyway - this face stuff looks like exfoliator. It's clear with little brown beads in which melt in your hands to become fake tan. It says it's fragrance-free but there is a bit of a chemically smell. Putting it on is a little daunting because once the beads have melted, the mixture becomes a very different colour than it was in the bottle. It is quite orangey but it rubs in well, isn't greasy and spreads well. The colour does calm down a bit. Promise. After a few seconds you realise it's not actually that strong in colour at all.
It's easy to get off with facewipes too.
He-Shi One Day Tan
This 'perfectly tinted, wash-off bronzer' is for face and body and is a little stickier than the Selfie lotion but does give a stronger colour - however, it's definitely a more orange colour which might work on some peoples' skin, but not so much on mine. This was a tough one to take off with facewipes (I needed three).
St. Tropez Instant Tan
This one definitely takes the cake. It's my fave by a long way. It goes on silky smooth, doesn't dry your face out, still manages to mattify, and give the most convincing colour I've seen on myself since I got back from Malaga in '06. It's water resistant too so I trust that, if I did choose to partake in any exercise, I wouldn't end up with brown streaks down my face either. Top work.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.