How to care for your home sunbed
After treating yourself to your tanning bed, there will most likely be one thing on your mind – what can I do to care for my home sunbed and keep it in the best shape possible?
Here are some quick and easy tips to help you care for your home sunbed the best way possible, covering things you can do both during your tanning sessions, and afterwards.
1. Remove your jewellery before tanning
One of the main things that can affect your sunbed’s tanning performance is the condition of the acrylic; especially on laydown beds. This can be affected by scratching, clouding and general damage and uncleanliness. However, how can we combat this?
One way to prevent this is to remove all jewellery prior to tanning. This can help stop you from scratching the acrylic whilst you tan. What’s more, some jewellery can heat up quickly, so by removing this, you lessen the likelihood of your jewellery heating up and burning you. Finally, this will also prevent you from gaining tan lines.
2. Don’t sit on your equipment with jeans / studded clothing on
One of the main reasons why both home customers and salons experience acrylic damage is from people sitting on their laydown tanning equipment with jeans on. Typically, people will do this when removing shoes or clothing prior to a tanning session. However, the body will move naturally whilst doing this, meaning that any jean studs can scratch your equipment. These scratches and scuffs can prevent your equipment from performing as well as desired.
This can also be relevant for belts, skirts etc.
Tip: If you need to sit down to remove clothing, we recommend placing a chair near your home sunbed to act as a support that won’t risk damaging your acrylic.
3. Use the right products during your session
Although it may be tempting to use different products instead of a tanning lotion, this can be damaging for both yourself and your equipment.
Tanning lotions are designed for tanning, they care for, rejuvenate and nourish skin whilst you tan, for deeper, longer-lasting results, and restore any lost natural oils from the process. In comparison, high street moisturisers, baby oil, and other trending products have not been designed to care for the same purpose. Many high-street products contain alcohols or drying ingredients. When using this in conjunction with a sunbed, the drying ingredients can increase your risk of overexposing or burning skin, leading to sun damage.
Tanning lotions have also been designed to work with your home sunbed. This is especially important for laydown sunbeds, or if you lean on the walls of your stand up tanning unit. Your sunbed’s acrylic (the clear plastic between you and your lamps) is porous. This means that when your home sunbed heats up, the acrylic expands, and when the session is over it contracts to prevent it cracking. Applying products not designed for tanning during this process can prevent your acrylic from being able to do this. when this happens, your sunbed’s acrylic will start clouding, before it eventually cracks. When this cracks, it will need replacing immediately which can be costly.
4. Cleaning your home sunbed
One of the worst things for your home sunbed is cleaning with household cleaners. Many of these contain abrasive ingredients such as bleach and alcohols. These ingredients can degrade and damage your equipment.
We recommend either a specific sunbed cleaning solution such as Smart Clean, glass cleaner or simply warm, soapy water. These alternatives are gentle enough, to care for your home sunbed and allow you to clean your sunbed after every use, to keep it in the best condition possible, whilst also avoiding damage.
Remember: You should clean your sunbed after every use. This is to remove any sweat or lotion from the bed which could cloud your acrylic over time and lessen your equipment’s tanning performance.
5. Don’t forget to care for your sunbed filters!
Another way to care for home sunbed is to clean your filters regularly. Your sunbed filters (available in laydown and stand up sunbeds) improve air flow and remove dust. However, if not cleaned regularly this can risk your sunbed overheating.
To clean them, simply hoover to remove all dust, dirt and debris that may have been collected. Easy as that!
