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How To Get Spray Tan Off Your Hands & Feet: 9 Easy Methods

How To Get Spray Tan Off Hands

You rarely receive this warning when you are getting the fake tan spray, planning on spray tanning or using a self-tanner. It only takes a warm washcloth to remove spray tan off a couch, but your body is a completely different story. You’d be surprised how hard it is to get spray tan off the hands and soles of your feet when it first happens. Patchy hands can really ruin a spray tanning experience, and you’re probably scrambling on how to fix it.

Luckily, we have tips on how to get spray tan off your hands and hopefully you’ll find the method that works for you.

Here are 9 ways to get fake tan off your hands and feet, but prevention is the first thing to keep in mind. If you’re new to spray tanning, see first how to prepare for a spray tan.

1. Take A Bath

Taking A Bath

A nice warm bath always helps take the edge as well as the tan off. Warm water removes dead skin cells faster than lukewarm water, opens up the pores and soothes the skin.

Soaking in warm water also helps remove spray tan, softening the spray tan to a lighter shade. Before taking a bath, try rubbing on a layer of calming bath oil to remove any blotchy fake tan spots.

Using hydrogen peroxide during your shower can help remove fake tan, as it is a powerful bleaching chemical, but be careful and rub it only in the area you want to remove fake tan from, and wash it off immediately upon application.

2. Go Swimming

Swimming is another great way to remove spray tan from your hands and feet. Cold water doesn’t help too much, but it most likely has chlorine if you’re swimming in a pool. Chlorine is a good spray tan remover, and bathing in it affects your whole body.

Of course, you shouldn’t do this if you want to keep the spray tan on other areas. Also, take a bath or shower to remove any chlorine from your skin, as it’s unhealthy to keep it on for too long.

3. Exfoliate

Exfoliation is an important step of skin care for dry skin and is beneficial to removing stubborn patches off hands and feet after spray tanning. This is because it helps remove the dead skin cells on top the most, and since the top layer has taken in most of the spray tan, removing it is important.

Exfoliation also fixes discoloration, especially if you’re using an exfoliator with an oil base like coconut oil or other essential oils. Even baby oil is great as it breaks up the DHA in your spray tan.

If you feel like regular exfoliation isn’t enough, you can scrub it off with an exfoliating mitt, but you shouldn’t use your exfoliant before the mitt, as the mitt works on friction. Using lotions, exfoliators and oils will make the skin slippery, making it difficult for the mitt to do its magic.

DIY Scrub To Remove Orange Spray Tan

The things you’ll need for the scrub:

  • Two tablespoons of baking soda
  • Tablespoon of sugar
  • Five ounces (150 milliliters) of lemon juice
  • Few drops of hydrogen peroxide
  • Generous amount of water

Once you’ve gathered all of your ingredients, it’s time to make your scrub:

  1.  Grab yourself a bowl or bottle, preferably one that can take 25 ounces (750 milliliters) or more.
  2. Put two tablespoons of baking soda, a tablespoon of sugar, five ounces of lemon juice, a few drops of hydrogen peroxide and water into the bowl or bottle of your choice.
  3. Mix all ingredients, use gentle stirring, followed by vigorous shaking if you’ve chosen the bottle; if not, just increase stirring density until incorporated.
  4.  Now that the scrub is ready, aim for your orange patches or even dark patches and gently dab with a cotton pad or scrub with more if you want to remove it off your skin altogether. You can use a cotton ball if the spot is small and you don’t want to ruin your skin tan.

This scrub will be enough for multiple uses depending on how much tan removal you intend on doing each time. Preferably, you should store your tan removal in a bottle for easy access.

4. Use Vinegar

Vinegar For Spray Tan

There are two kinds of vinegar most commonly recommended, apple vinegar and white vinegar. Either of these will do the job, but keep in mind that with the level of acidity in vinegar, you can’t use it as a solitary ingredient for blotchy fake tan removal. However, it is great for smoothing the spray tan out and getting rid of fake tan stains.

Take a shower and exfoliate after using vinegar, because not cleaning the vinegar out could lead to an uneven skin tan.

5. Use Lemon Juice

Lemon juice is quite popular for removing spray tan flops. With its citric acid and vitamin C, it works like a light bleach for your skin, gently fading the tan. 

You can put it in your hot bath if you want all of your spray-tanned skin affected. If you’re looking to clean and even out a blotchy tan, you should follow these steps:

  1. Grab your towel or tanning mitt, dap it with a little lemon juice and pour water on it.
  2. Put it in the microwave at medium heat for about two minutes.
  3. Gently rub the area you’d like to fix. Do not forget to wash it off afterward as well as exfoliate.

6. Go To The Steam Room Or Sauna

Sauna For Spray Tan

If you’re able to, use a steam room or sauna. It’s an excellent way to exfoliate, and the heat from a sauna will practically melt your tan off by softening the spray tan on your skin. Just make sure to be able to rub the tan off using circular motions by using a wet towel after leaving the sauna.

You should not do this if you don’t want your entire body affected. If you’re only targeting specific areas such as your hands, using steam for removing fake tan is a bad idea. Luckily, there are a lot of alternatives that can hone in on your specific problem.

7. Use Baking Soda

Baking soda is great when you want to take tan off your hands or any other specific spot. You can simply rub it on your skin, but for a greater effect mix it with water and your favorite coconut or baby oil and then rub it on your skin. Rinse it after leaving it on for a couple of minutes and it should be perfect.

8. Use Acetone Or Nail Polish Remover

Nail Polish Remover For Spray Tan

Acetone is an excellent natural exfoliant able to remove fake tan quickly, even after the tan has set in. It’s great if you need to lighten a spray tan error, especially when it comes to the hands and soles of your feet.

9. Use Toothpaste

Although a slightly lengthier process because you have to leave it on for half an hour for it to work, toothpaste is a great tan remover. If you have some whitening toothpaste, just scrub it onto the area where you want your spray tan lightened or erased, and leave it for half an hour. After it’s done, rinse and exfoliate.

Where toothpaste exceels is when you have a small patch, because of how easy it is to apply toothpaste on the affected area of skin you want fixed.

Choosing the right spray tan machine is crucial for achieving the desired look. You can see our top choices here. This also affects how long a spray tan lasts and you can find out more about this topic in our blog post.

Conclusion

Now you know how to get spray tan off hands, and in a plethora of ways. Despite having these answers, you always have to be careful when spray tanning, especially if you’re using a machine for a self-tan, so you don’t get tan on the most absorbent areas such as your palms and soles.