Summer rolls around and everyone is busy stocking up on sunscreens, but there isn’t as big of a dash to stock up on skin brighteners. Here at Peach and Lily, we’re busy finding ourselves the best skin brighteners for the summer sun because we know that this will be a huge solution in fighting off melasma to keep that face from accumulating sunspots this summer.
Here’s the way we see it. Sunscreen is mandatory, but unless it’s reapplied every 30-90 minutes (depending on which one), even an spf 90 isn’t going to be 100% foolproof. Unfortunately, the summer rays are really strong and when that spf isn’t reapplied religiously - and very, very few really apply frequently enough - melanin production is triggered. Do apply your sunscreen, but also use your brighteners religiously every summer. Why? Brighteners (NOT lighteners) have safe and often natural ingredients like arbutin and vitamin C in them that really helps to suppress melanin production.
Here’s our roundup of some of our favorite melanin suppressing ingredients:
- Arbutin: comes from leaves of bearberries, cranberries, mulberries or blueberries. These are natural forms of hydroquinone that really help to inhibit melanin production.
- Vitamin C: two birds with one stone - awesome antioxidant and effectively lightens dark spots
- Kojic acid: happy discovery in the sake fermentation process that this attacks dark spots. However, this ingredient isn’t as effective in skincare formulations and may cause some skin irritation to those allergic, so it’s a good idea to find products that effectively leverage this wonderful ingredient (also an antioxidant) into its formulation.
We HIGHLY recommend that a skin brightener be used over the summer as it’s a lot easier to keep sun spots from forming than to get rid of them once they’re there.
Cheers to a sunspot-free summer!
- xo, Alicia
