The honest answer

Is spray tanning safe?

What the active ingredient actually is, what the regulators have published about it, and the three questions worth asking any studio before you book. Sources are linked beside every claim.

Written by Studio Rhema, Dundas, Ontario. Last reviewed September 20, 2026.

What is actually in a spray tan?

One ingredient does the work: dihydroxyacetone, almost always written as DHA. It is a simple sugar. When it meets the amino acids in the outermost layer of your skin it produces brown pigment, in the same family of reactions that browns a cut apple. The colour is made in the dead surface cells you are already shedding, which is exactly why a spray tan fades rather than washes off, and why it leaves when those cells leave.

Nothing in that process involves ultraviolet light, and nothing in it asks your body to produce melanin. That single difference is the whole reason sunless tanning exists.

What have regulators actually published about DHA?

DHA is a permitted cosmetic colour with a clearly stated limit on how it may be used. The FDA lists it as a colour additive whose use in cosmetics, including sunless tanning products, is restricted to external application under 21 CFR 73.2150. The FDA defines externally applied as “applied only to external parts of the body and not to the lips or any body surface covered by mucous membrane”.

In Canada, cosmetics are regulated by Health Canada under the Cosmetic Regulations, and ingredients prohibited or restricted here appear on the Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist. The FDA documentation is quoted on this page because it is the most detailed published guidance on this particular ingredient, not because a US rule governs a Canadian studio.

Does a spray tan protect you from the sun?

No, and this is the most important sentence on the page. A spray tan gives you no meaningful protection from ultraviolet light. The FDA is direct about it: “Sunless tanners and bronzers may or may not provide protection from the sun. Only those sunless tanners that contain sunscreen ingredients and are labeled with sun protection factor (‘SPF’) numbers may provide protection.” A tanning product with no sunscreen in it is required to carry a warning saying it does not protect against sunburn.

A spray tan is the colour of a tan with none of the damage, and none of the protection either. Wear sunscreen exactly as you would on your palest day.

How does it compare with a tanning bed or the sun?

This is where the comparison stops being close. Health Canada’s published position on ultraviolet tanning is one sentence long: “There is no safe way to tan.” The same page records that in 2009 the World Health Organization changed the classification of UV-emitting tanning devices to “carcinogenic to humans”, its highest category, and that the WHO and the International Agency for Research on Cancer found tanning equipment can increase the risk of developing melanoma by 59% where first exposure was before the age of 35.

A spray tan emits no ultraviolet light whatsoever. That is not a claim that spray tanning is healthy. It is the plain observation that the specific mechanism causing the harm above is entirely absent.

The three questions the FDA says to ask any spray tanning facility

These are not our questions. The FDA publishes them, word for word, as what to ask when considering a facility where DHA is applied by spraying or misting. Ask them here, and ask them anywhere else you book.

“Are consumers protected from exposure in the entire area of the eyes, in addition to the eyes themselves? Are consumers protected from exposure on the lips and all parts of the body covered by mucous membrane? Are consumers protected from internal exposure caused by inhaling or ingesting the product?”

The FDA adds what to do with the answers: “Consumers should request measures to protect their eyes and mucous membranes and prevent inhalation.” Notice that all three are about controlling where the mist goes. A person applying a tan by hand can direct the spray, work around your face deliberately, and stop. An automatic nozzle in an unattended booth releases the same mist regardless of where you are standing or what you are doing with your breath, which is the specific use the FDA singles out as not approved.

What can go wrong, honestly

Two things, and neither is hidden. The first is a reaction to the solution. The FDA records consumer reports of adverse events associated with sunless tanning, including rashes and, in the case of spray tanning booths, “coughing, dizziness, and fainting”. If your skin reacts to products easily, say so before you book rather than after.

The second is a disappointing result rather than a health problem: streaks, patches, an orange cast. That is not the ingredient going wrong, it is preparation and application. The difference between hand-applied and a booth covers why, and the prep guide covers the half that is yours to control. If you are worried specifically about colour on fair skin, that is its own page: shades and skin tones.