Dear TanningBeds.org,
Hopefully you can help me. I have been tanning in a stand up bed and have had great results on my upper body. Unfortunately, my legs haven’t caught up yet. I would like to maintain the tan on my upper body and get darker on my legs. Any ideas on this? I used a tan accellerator for legs but didn’t like how it made them kind of orangey.

Thanks,
Deborah
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Common problem. So common, in fact, that I designed a home tanning bed to address the problem about 6 years ago. Here is a picture of it. It has more UVB in the leg area to stimulate tanning. We also sell just the lamps, so some salons are installing the lamps in regular tanning beds to get the same advantage. It is becoming more and more popular, as it is the cheapest way to address the issue, and it works well.

The likely reason you are not tanning as well on your legs is: shaving. You might try some changes in your leg shaving routine, something that will remove less skin. Any time you shave, you are scraping away some of your tan.

Other options:

1. Find a “legs only” tanning machine to use (hard to find, and expensive).

2. Every 3rd session or so, sit in a chair at the end of the bed with only your legs in the tanning bed. Or change to the “legs only” position halfway through every session. (Both are awkward but effective).

3. Quit shaving your legs. (ok, just kidding!)

That is pretty much it. Those “leg tanning accelerators” are simply bronzers, and using bronzers only on your legs will likely make them a different color than the rest of your body. Not pretty. Tanning beds always tan strongest in the center of the bed anyway (there are reasons for this that I won’t bore you with…) so it is a challenge to get a perfectly even tan in the best of circumstances.

You can try cheating and use a bronzer all over, but more often on the legs, which may even out the color a bit, but I am still betting on either changing the shaving routine to something more gentle and/or getting more UV on just the legs.

Dennis