It is pretty easy to see what lamps your tanning bed uses and there are a variety of methods to determine this. Keep in mind that what I am refering to is the size and wattage, NOT the brand name. Most brands of lamps come in several sizes, and you can replace the lamps in a home tanning bed with any brand you choose, so the primary focus should be on the size, not the brand.

The vast majority of modern home tanning beds use F71 / 100 watt lamps. As in 98% or more of them. This is a 71″ (approximate) lamp with two metal pins on each end of the lamp, similar to standard 4 foot overhead fluorescent lamps. Tanning beds that use high pressure facials, (the blue plate over your face that has a single lamp inside) will usually use F59 / 80 watt lamps in front of the facial unit itself, since the reduced space needs shorter lamps. These are just shorter, lower powered versions of the F71 lamp. Typically, a tanning bed with a high pressure facial uses 6 of these F59 lamps.

Often you can look at the lamp itself to determine the size and wattage of the lamp, although this is not so obvious on some of the older tanning lamps, particularly Wolff brand. There is usually a series of numbers under the brand name that looks like this:

F71T12BP50BL

In this example, the F71 referes to the length. T12 is a measurement of the diameter of the lamp, in 1/8th inch incriments. A T8 lamp is 1 inch in diameter, whereas a T12 is 1 1/5 inches and is the most commonly used size in tanning. The BP stands for BI PIN. 50 indicates this lamp has a mix of UV that is 5% UVB and 95% UVA. The BL means BLUE phosphor. PK or PINK would indicate a pink phosphor.

Another method is to read the label on the tanning bed. Most modern tanning beds will have the replacement lamps listed on one of the labels on the front or top of the tanning bed, using similar numbers as above. The most important is the F number and whether or not the bed has a high pressure facial.

If you can’t tell from these methods, you can still physically look at the bed and tell what lamp you need very often. If the tanning bed uses lamp starters, then it is using F71 lamps (or F71 and F59 if you have a facial). Lamp starters are small, usually tan cylinders located toward one end of each lamp. They are about 1 inch in diamter and about 1 1/2 inches tall. They are a switch to ignite the lamp when it is first started and are used on most tanning beds sold.

If your tanning bed does not have lamp starters, it might still be F71, but could be other sizes. If you lamps do not have two metal pins (which you slide in and rotate to install) but instead the ends of the lamp have black plastic caps and the lamps spring in and out of place, then you have RDC lamps, which can be F73 lamps, or less likely, F72 lamps. You need to call your lamp distributor with detailed information about your bed, including year made (on the back label), brand name and model to determine the proper lamp. These are quite rare, and usually only found on older tanning beds, particularly ones built in the 1980s. Some brands would include SunDash, Suntana, Montego Bay and others.

Some brands of tanning beds have always used the same size and wattage, so its very easy to determine the lamp type. If you own a SunQuest, SunMaster (except rare 32 lamp beds),SunVision, SunStar, ESB, Soleil, Virtual Sun, Alpha Sun, Supreme, Alisun, or Sunal tanning bed, you are guaranteed to use F71 lamps, and F59 in front of the facial if so equipped.

Now that you know the size of lamp you need, you just need to pick out a replacement lamps, which may or may not be the same as your original lamp, but I will leave that for another posting.