Today our delivery of Eco Tan Natural Sunscreen arrived in the warehouse. I was reluctant to add this to the store until I could give a very detailed description of how it applies to the skin, how well it stays on, how it washes off and what it feels like on the skin, so here it is, my extremely thorough review.

Consistency & look out of the tube

When I first took the factory seal off and squeezed some out, there was some very thin & clear liquid that came out of the tube. This is totally normal for any natural sunscreen, so I wasn't surprised. All you need to do is put the lid back on and squeeze and smoosh the tube around to mix it up a little. Since it's not full of chemicals and stabilisers and thickeners and who knows what else, they can sometimes separate a little. It's normal.

Once it was all mixed in, I found the consistency to still be quite thin, more like a chemical sunscreen than a zinc oxide based one. It's a little on the shiny, glossy side and it's tinted with a natural skin tone instead of being white. It's not enough of a tint to actually give you a fake tan, that's what organic fake tan products are for, so this won't replace a fake tan product.

How does it rub in?

Very well. When I put it on my arm, I put WAY TOO MUCH on, which you'll be able to see further down in a photograph where I tried to wash it off with water to show your water resistant it is. So basically, a little goes a long way.

The following, rather dodgy iPhone photo, gives a reasonable indication. I will take a better photograph down the track and replace this one, but for now, you get the idea.

LEFT - is a dollop straight out of the tube. I wanted you to see how thick / runny it is. It didn't run straight off my arm, but it's reasonably thin. This is a good thing. It rubs in really easily.

MIDDLE - is a dollop that was pretty much the same as the one on the left, but I started to thin it out a little so you could see the consistency. It is by no means rubbed in and I put too much on.

RIGHT - from the right of that middle dollop spread out through to my wrist, the Eco Tan sunscreen is now rubbed in. As you can see, it's not white and pasty, it's not overtly tanned either.

ecotan-sunscreen-arm1

How easily does it rub off?

After I rubbed all that sunscreen in to my arm, I wanted to see how easy it was to get off. Since the product is 3 hours water resistant, I thought I'd see what happened when I got it wet. Below is a photograph of me running my arm under water for 60 seconds and trying to rub all the sunscreen off. As you can see, the water is beading on my arm, and it's a weird colour because I had about 6 times too much sunscreen on my arm. Despite that, it was rubbed in really evenly and would have provided me totally amazing protection had I needed to go outside with it on.

ecotan-sunscreen-arm2

It did wash off really easily with a liquid body wash. The hand I rubbed it in with felt like it could do with a quick moisturise afterwards, but for me, that happens with all zinc based sunscreens. I didn't find any residue left behind, but if you do, the quickest and easiest way to wash and moisturise at the same time is to take your Eco Tan Exfoliating Glove in to the shower and put a little bit of coconut oil on it and wash it off in the shower. The glove will get rid of any residue and the coconut oil will moisturise you at the same time. You'll be able to tell how well it worked because your glove will be quite dirty and you'll need to rinse it out with some soap afterwards. If you happened to buy one of our Kits with the fake tan and the glove in it, you'll find a small free pot of Coconut Magic coconut oil in there to try it out for yourself.