Guide: How to shop for sunscreen on-line. Pick the right sunscreen for your skin.
Sunscreen is the #1 investment you can make in the health of your skin. Shopping for a sunscreen on-line is hard because texture and aesthetics are crucial in you choosing one you love. How do you choose one when you can’t touch and feel it in person? Here are our key tips for shopping for a sunscreen on-line.
How to choose a sunscreen- top criteria ranked:
Protection level in the UVA Range based on unique skin needs
Texture preference
Transparency
Hydration Level
Additional skincare benefits
Protection level in the UVA Range based on unique skin needs
You’ll notice that we specified the UVA protection of a sunscreen as being the #1 important factor in choosing a sunscreen. Here is a quick run down of why': UVA accelerates the signs of aging, causes pigmentation and causes skin cancer. On paper, most people understand the impact that UVA plays on the skin but don’t understand how that correlates to choosing their sunscreen. Isn’t the label ‘broad spectrum’ enough? No. Should I look for a PA rating. Preferably, you would know the UVA Protection Factor of your sunscreen as a specific number and not as a broad range. You should generally choose a sunscreen with a UVA PF of over 10 as a broad rule of thumb. Most North American sunscreens have a UVA PF that ranges between 4-9. Our current facial sunscreens have UVA PF’s of 12.25-21.
If you have a history of skin cancer or suffer from pigmentation disorders, then you should choose a sunscreen with the highest UVA PF. Otherwise, you can choose based on the next following criteria. See our sunscreen comparison chart at the end for their respective UVA PF’s.
Texture Preference
Most people test out a sunscreen on the back of their hand when shopping in person, I’m sure many of you have tried swatching your SPF to see if you like the texture. This actually does not always give you the best representation of how you will like it on your face. What might feel greasy on the hand, could feel perfect for the face and vice versa. In some ways, there is really no replacement for seeing how a product wears on your face for a period of time. You’re therefore not missing out by not being able to test a product on your hand in person. If you purchase an SPF and it’s giving you the needed level of protection but the texture, transparency or hydration level is slightly off then you can fine tune its use with your other skincare products to a certain degree. You will share some tips for this in the next sections.
Transparency
Let's first begin by clarifying the terms. The perception of transparency depends on skin type since what might work really well for someone with pale Skin Type I but will not work for someone with darker skin that is Type VI. You'll often see this with a lot of Skinfluencers that are demoing a mineral SPF; they will add the caveat that what works for them, might not work for all. To be clear, we do have formulas that are 100% transparent as in they will rub into the skin with some agitation to be completely invisible for all skin types. Our current best-selling mineral sunscreen, Ava Isa Sun-e-Serum Drops SPF 35 will apply after minimal blending to be clear or invisible on all skin types. Our Ava Isa Every Morning SPF 30 will require some blending to be transparent on all skin types and might need more careful application on skin types V-VI. Our Simply Zinc Ultra SPF 50 and our Simply Zinc Lite SPF 50 are more transparent than many options available on the market but are not quite as transparent as the Ava Isa. Why? If transparency is all important to you, then check out our Guide on No White Cast Sunscreen.
Using Fitzpatrick Skin Type as a tool
We find the Fitzpatrick Skin Type classification to be a helpful tool created and used by dermatologists to use a common language around skin tone. Don’t know your Fitzpatrick Skin Type? See below and then check out our recommendations for which sunscreen works for each one. Once you find your specific Fitzpatrick sky type, stay tuned until the end for a complete picture on what sunscreen might be best suited for transparency plus all other criteria for choosing a sunscreen.
Which Fitzpatrick Skin Type are You?
Hydration Level
Our preference for how hydrating a sunscreen is will change throughout the season. In fact, this is the criteria overall that is most likely to change throughout the year, as our own hydration levels in skin change based on the weather and the humidity level inside your house and outside. You can absolutely swap out your sunscreen for more or less hydrating ones throughout the year based on this preference. However, you want to make sure that you are not downgrading your UVA protection as UVA exposure remains the same no matter the season.
We recommend tailoring your skincare products for your hydration needs. Are you experiencing dry skin during the colder months? Make sure to layer in hydration with a serum and moisturizer before you apply your sunscreens. You can actually seal in your sunscreen with an extra layer of moisturizer application over top by gently patting a small amount once your SPF has dried down. At night time, you can complete your skincare routine with a couple drops of a medium weight carrier oil like squalane, jojoba oil or marula oil as the last step in your skincare routine. This adds an extra element for softening the skin and sealing in hydration without the unnecessary kind of occlusion that petroleum jelly provides. We also recommend using a cold humidifier in your bedroom at night.
If you find you get oilier during more humid/hot months, then you can lighten your hydration products like with a lighter weight moisturizer. We still recommend using a serum as this helps with dehydration of the skin. Think of it like water for the skin- we all need it no matter the season.
Additional Skincare Benefits
There are lots of marketing claims when it comes to your sunscreen around blue light protection, infrared, anti-inflammatories and anti-oxidants. For blue-light and infrared protection, we will include additional skincare like ingredients like the Micah in our Ava Isa Sun-è-Serum Drops as bonus ingredients. These are nice-to-have ingredients but we would argue not need-to-have ones. The science behind them is still evolving so they are not worth purchasing sunscreen products for them exclusively. Judge a sunscreen by their UVA protection as its main criteria for efficacy.
For anti-inflammatories and anti-oxidants, we created a whole post on their difference and why we like anti-oxidants like the AOX in our Simply Zinc’s as an ancillary ingredient. We also shared why we do not use anti-inflammatories in any of our sunscreen formulations. That means you’ll never find butyl octyl salicylate, bisabolol or more common ingredients like aloe vera, allantoin or niacinamide in our sunscreen formulas. Curious as to why? Click here to read on the good, bad and ugly when it comes to Anti-Oxidants, UV Filters and Anti-Inflammatories.
Our newest formula, our Ava Isa Every Morning SPF 30, contains one of the most innovative skincare actives we’ve seen to date. Cholesterol derived from up-cycled lambs wool, not to be confused with lanolin, provides incredible skin barrier repair, pigment correction and hydration. It’s also a pre-cursor for the creation of Vitamin D3 in the skin.
A Comparison of our Sunscreens
With that, we’ve compiled this handy visual to help you decide which is the right sunscreen for you from our current offerings. As you’ll notice, all of our current sunscreens offer light to deep hydration. We want everyone to have a sunscreen that they love to use daily and that will give the maximum amount of protection to help sustain the health of their skin.
Find the right sunscreen for your skin.
That’s it for now! Share with us your questions and what blog topics you would like us to handle next.
As a thank you for reading our blog, we would like to offer you a 10% off discount on any of our mineral sunscreens in our online store. Click the link below and use promo code SUNBLOG10 at checkout for our exclusive blog discount.
