• Exfoliating before self-tanning will give you the best results.
• Using a tan extender can prolong the life of your tan, as can using a daily moisturizer.
• It is not considerable to pay a high salon fee to achieve a natural-looking dismal tan.

As a naturally extremely fair-skinned person who’s always been prone to burning, I’ve spent years on a quest for a natural-looking, affordable unlit tan. These five products are the best I’ve found and the least likely to leave you streaky or orange!

1.) Mystic Tan – $12 to $25 per session, depending on which salon you visit. The Mystic Tan systems can be found at a wide variety of locations, from beauty salons/spas to gyms. They are most easily found at tanning salons or at Mystic Tan salons. The Mystic Tan is the closest and most cost-efficient way to emulate the experience of having an aesthetician at a salon or spa hand-airbrush you with self-tanner. Because a personalized treatment like that can cost upwards of $100, and doesn’t necessarily last any longer than a Mystic Tan, this is your next best bet. When you arrive at a Mystic Tan salon, you will be shown a video that teaches you how to get the best results. Pay attention to the video – it really does give grand advice on how to avoid streaking, white areas around your knuckles and wrists, and too considerable product on your feet and hands. The self-tanning process itself only takes about thirty seconds total (fourteen to fifteen seconds on each side of your body), and my favorite part is that it dries instantly – you can towel off the excess bronzer, get dressed, and be on your way!

2.) MysticSunless Spray – $20.95 from the Mystic Tan website (www.shopmystictan.com), but they also say that prices might be lower at your local salon. This product claimed to work as well as the Mystic Tan, but without having to go to a salon or pay each time. While it’s definitely more difficult to do the self-tanning yourself instead of standing in a booth and being sprayed, I actually liked having control over where the spray was going. There is a bronzer that shows up instantly and gives a nice light sheen to your skin, and the rest of the color develops over the next four hours. The color itself is quite comparable to what you’d get from a Mystic Tan, and it lasted for the same amount of time (around four to five days). There are supplementary products that you can also buy that will extend the life of your tan (my record was eight days) or prepare your skin for the self-tanning process. With any self-tanner, I would strongly recommend exfoliating first to make your skin’s surface area as even as possible. The MysticSunless exfoliant is glorious, but I found other, less expensive products to be just as good.

3.) Neutrogena MicroMist Sunless Tanning Spray – $11.99 or less at most drugstores. This is a great drugstore brand that comes in two colors, Medium (which turns you two shades darker than your natural skin color), and Deep (three shades darker). If you’re light-skinned or modern to sunless tanning, I would definitely recommend the Medium shade, as errors will be less positive and easier to correct. I tend to like sprays, because they design it possible to tan hard-to-reach areas like the back, back of legs, etc., but if you’re a fan of foams or creams, Neutrogena makes these also (my personal favorites are the Sunless Tanning Foam, $10.09, and the Instant Bronze Sunless Tanner and Bronzer, $9.99). As a side note, though you can use these products on your face as well, I would recommend buying a separate tanner that is specifically meant for the face to avoid breakouts and extremely visible mistakes. All of the brands I have listed so far have face-specific tanners as well.

4.) Tantowel Self-Tan Towelette – $19.99 for a box of ten towelettes (www.drugstore.com). These individually wrapped towelettes are pre-soaked with self-tanner. These are extremely convenient if you’re traveling, and compose in a shorter amount of time than most (around three hours). The packaging says that you can apply another after three hours if you want a darker tan, but I have not yet tried that. You have less control over how much product comes out at a time than if you’re using a spray/lotion/foam, but the color still comes out evenly. The best employ for this product is as a mistake fixer – just swipe it over tan lines or uneven color (I use it between my fingers and toes, since somehow self-tanner never manages to settle well there!). L’Oreal also makes a good self-tan towelette (Sublime Bronze Self-Tanning Towelettes, $9.49 for six) that are available at most local drugstores.

5.) Dove Energy Glow Daily Moisturizer – $7.99 at most drugstores. This lotion comes in Medium and Dark, and has a separate product for use on the face. This is one of several moisturizers that can be used daily, and unlike other self-tanners, only deposits a small amount of color at a time. If you’re looking for immediate, dramatic results, consume another product – but this one is practically mistake-proof, and over the course of two days to a week, your skin will turn several shades darker. My favorite allotment of this is that I can use it anytime and not worry that streaks or missed areas will suddenly turn up in the middle of dinner or a night out. Two other comparable products are Jergens Natural Glow Daily Moisturizer ($7.19 at drugstores) and Aveeno Active Naturals Continuous Radiance Moisturizing Lotion ($8.89 at drugstores, great for people with more sensitive skin).

With spring just around the corner in many parts of the country, it’s only natural that for many of us, thoughts of sandals, sundresses and sunglasses are starting to occupy our minds. Flipping through the swimwear section of the Victoria’s Secret catalog and taking in page after page of thin, toned and tanned models romping in the surf and sand of faraway, exotic locales, it’s easy–inevitable, even–to begin dwelling on the promise, no matter how distant it may seem just yet, of weather forecasts that don’t include the words “windchill factor”, “freezing temperatures” or, that four-letter word to beat all four-letter words, “snow”.

For some of us, however, the excitement felt at the prospect of longer, gloriously warmer days can be tempered somewhat by the dread of shorter hemlines and arm-baring tops that demonstrate our skin for what it really is: Very, very pale. If you’re like me, you cringe slightly at the fear of blinding innocent passers-by with the glare of sunlight reflecting off your whiter-than-white flesh, and shudder outright at the conception of your translucent skin showing every stretch mark, dimple and spider vein that time or genetics have made a allotment of your body’s landscape. Fear may tempt you to run to your nearest tanning salon and subject yourself to the unsafe and damaging UV rays of the beds impartial to take the edge off of your paleness, or, if you’re just as afraid of skin cancer as you are of looking like a Lestat wannabe while everyone around you looks like they just came back from a week in Aruba, you might think shelling out the gargantuan bucks to have a tan applied to your skin via spray booth or airbrush.

But in these financially cramped times, there’s no need to shell out the broad bucks destroying the health of your skin with ultraviolet radiation or driving across town to have a sunless tan applied. It is possible–and with a little practice, the apt technique and the accurate products, easy–to effect a sun-kissed glow so natural-looking that no one will ever suspect your pasty little secret. All you need are the right products, the right tools, and some suitable tips and techniques to guarantee you’ll maintain glowing all summer long.

First and foremost (and perhaps most challenging) is finding the right sunless tanner for your particular skin type, skin tone, and gloomy tanning goals. The good news is that there are a lot of great products out there, and a quick search of top-notch websites like www.sunless.com or www.makeupalley.com can give you a great deal of insight into products that other gloomy tanning devotees count among their must-haves and never-agains. The dreadful news, however, is that what looked great on one person might not look so great on you. So the first rule is:

If at first you turn orange (or yellow or peach or nothing happens at all), try, try again. Personally, I’ve come to adore Au Courant’s sunless tanners, available for purchase on the Au Courant Web site, aucourant.com. If I need a tanner immediately and don’t have time to wait for something to arrive in the mail, I’ll go for my second choice, Clarins Self-Tanning Milk SPF 6, available at Clarins counters everywhere or at clarins.com. If I’m feeling pasty and I happen to be a little low on cash, I’ll choose a more affordable option from the Banana Boat line, viewable at bananaboat.com and available for capture at drugstores and mass-market retailers everywhere. Conversely, no matter how strapped I am, I won’t go anywhere near Neutrogena’s unlit tanning line, as I have found it turns me a very unattractive shade of yellow. Your mileage may vary, however. One of my sisters swears by Neutrogena’s sunless tanning line, as it turns her a beautiful shade of bronze. Try a few tanners (preferably on an area concealed by clothing and before bare-skin weather gets into full swing) and see what produces the best color results on you. And should your first few forays into sunless tanning not produce the results you want, hold at it. Most major drugstore chains have a good return policy for cosmetic items, so if you hang onto your receipts, you won’t lose anything but a little bit of time if a particular sunless tanning product turns out to be an record failure for you. Eventually, by trying a variety of brands and formulations, you’ll find the proper product for you, and when that magic moment happens, you’ll be glad you persevered. That, however, brings us to rule number two, which is:

Not all skin is created equal, even if it’s all your skin. In other words, what works beautifully on your legs may not work as well on your face, or vice-versa. This is particularly true if your facial skin is oily or breakout-prone, but the skin on other parts of your body is drier. If that describes your skin, you may need more than one product: one for your face and neck, and another for the rest of your body. Again, trial and error is the key here. Also, keep in mind that for everyone, the skin on some parts of the body is thicker than it is on other parts of the body. What this means in self-tanning terms is that while a product may give you a gorgeous brown color on your forearms and shoulders, it might make your heels, toes, elbows, knees and knuckles look dirty. In my personal experience, I’ve found that using a lighter-colored sunless tanner on those areas, diluting a favorite tanner with regular body lotion, and/or applying regular body lotion to rough areas before proceeding with the dusky tanner and again about ten minutes after applying tanner helps in achieving consistent, even, natural-looking results everywhere, even in those current trouble spots.

Third, there is a sunless tanning dress code. Wear gloves! Remember those trouble spots I just mentioned? Add to that list the palms of your hands and the areas between your fingers. Especially if you’re not a seasoned sunless-tanner user, you probably will (and should) take your time making sure you’ve applied the product evenly, not missed any spots or failed to rub the product in completely (I recommend an overlapping, circular motion when rubbing the product in). The problem lies in the fact that the extra time you steal gives the rougher, more absorbent skin of your palms a more-than-ample opportunity to absorb quite a bit of sunless tanner, and washing it off without splashing water onto the rest of yourself (which will stop the development of color and leave you splotchy) is nigh impossible. Save yourself the trouble and wear latex or nitrile surgical gloves. A box of 50 pairs can usually be had for $5-$10 at drugstores, and wearing them while you apply your sunless tanning product can spare you from that most dreaded of all sunless tanning afflictions, The Dreaded Orange Palm Disease. It’s certainly much easier (and more feasible) to go back and apply tanner to the backs of your hands with a makeup sponge after you remove the gloves than it is to keep your hands in your pockets until Labor Day.

Fourth, do your homework–or rather, your prepwork. You wouldn’t try to cook a gourmet meal without first preparing your workspace and chopping, dicing, and measuring all your ingredients. The same logic dictates that you shouldn’t try to give yourself a sunless tan without preparing your skin properly. Exfoliation is key here. Just like the built-up skin on your body’s rougher areas can sometimes absorb too great tanner, so, too can excess dead skin on any other part of your body. And, adding insult to injury, not only can excess dead skin absorb too much tanner initially, it also acts as like roofing shingles for the newer, fresher skin underneath it, preventing your tanner from ever coming in contact with it. The result? When that plain skin sloughs off on its own, your tan will fade unevenly, leaving you patchy. Patchy is worse than pale. Don’t let it happen to you. And while we’re talking about exfoliation, it should be noted that you’re going for even exfoliation. Therefore, loofahs aren’t the best choice. I’ve found that mesh spa gloves work well, while others purchase net sponges, sugar scrubs, or other methods. Find what works for you.

Fifth, and finally, make sure you’ve got your have back. While the ideal is to have a friend or spouse or other person handy who can apply tanner to your back, it’s not impossible to tan every inch of your own hide with the apt tool. On the Au Courant website, they sell a device like a long-handled sponge paintbrush specifically for that purpose. You put the tanner on the sponge, and use the sponge to apply the tanner to your benefit. Ta-da! A seamless tan without any gaps. Looking for an even more budget-friendly option? Hit your local hardware store and head for the paint aisle. A standard foam paintbrush, while not as elegant-looking as Au Courant’s back tanning tool, should do the trick just as well.

Other sunless tanning tips and tricks from a seasoned sunless tanning pro:

Shave before you apply your sunless tanner, but not immediately before you apply your sunless tanner. There’s still some debate on this one, but I’ve found that if I shave in the morning and then apply my tanner at night, the pores on my legs have had a chance to cessation up, preventing the tanner from sinking into them and giving my legs a “freckled” look.

Keep your examine, or rather, your hand, on the ball. To get your tan to look even on your hands, try holding a tennis ball with the hand you’re applying the tanner to, then switch hands and relate the process. Holding a tennis ball will open up the little creases in your knuckles and prevent you from getting little white lines where there should be color.

Moisturize, moisturize, moisturize. Did I mention it’s important to moisturize? Moisturizing the rough spots on your body before sunless tanning prevents the skin from spellbinding too noteworthy tanner and producing a “dirty” look. Moisturizing those same areas about ten minutes after you apply your tanner helps dilute the tanner just slightly and spread it around a little, giving those difficult areas a more even peep. Moisturizing every tanned part of your body in the days following your dismal tanner application will help sustain your skin healthy and supple, extend the life of your dismal tan, and make the fading process more even and less noticeable.

Don’t sweat it (or dunk it or drench it or otherwise get it wet). I’m not saying that you can’t bathe or shower or swim with a sunless tan. Of course you can. You just can’t do so immediately. The minimum recommended waiting time between applying a sunless tanner and exposing your skin to any kind of liquid is one hour, but I’ve found that sometimes, even that isn’t enough. Your best bet? At the slay of the day, after the dishes, workouts, and children’s baths are done, grab a quick shower, exfoliate, dry your hair and then apply your sunless tanner. You’ll be asleep while your color develops, meaning you’ll steer clear of water by default.

When you’ve finally achieved that perfect sunless glow, don’t cover it up in makeup. When you’re pale, your skin is often so translucent that every little vein, red patch or dark circle is readily apparent. But once you’ve achieved a good sunless tan, the tanner often hides all those exiguous imperfections. So unless you’ve got something that truly needs covering, be pleased a pared-down makeup routine when you’ve got a shadowy tan. Forego foundation, perhaps using just a little tinted moisturizer in its location if you truly need a little something. Skip concealer for all but the most obvious flaws, and if you must use one, make sure it matches your recent skin tone. Focus on perking up your color even further with just a little bronzer and blush (liquid, cream and gel formulas are especially appropriate over a sunless tan as they’re sheerer and less likely to peruse ashy against your new, deeper skin tone), and unless you’re blessed with naturally sunless lashes and brows, don’t forget to give them some savor with a little tinted brow groomer and mascara. A quick slick of shiny gloss in a neutral or rosy tone will finish off your look and have you and your beautiful new tan out the door in minutes.

Learning to give yourself a superb sunless tan is like styling our hair, applying our makeup, painting our nails or anything else we do to improve our appearance and make ourselves feel proper about the way we gawk. It takes a bit of practice, and your first attempt may not be totally successful. But once you’ve got the hang of it, you can carry out a healthy, bronzed glow quickly, easily, inexpensively and, most important of all, safely.