Don’t trust all the new cosmetics that claim to protect you from the SUN

From foundation to fake tan, including SPF is beauty’s latest selling point. But our scientific test sounds a warning ...

AS we become more sunsavvy, cosmetics companies are increasingly adding SPF to our skincare and make-up. Surely it’s a win-win — multitasking products that will protect skin from sunburn and save time and money.

The problem is that we’re not protecting our skin. A study from the University of Liverpool has revealed moisturisers with SPF provide less sun protection than the equivalent- strength sunscreen, because we don’t apply them as liberally as sun cream.

when used properly, an SPF 30 should multiply your skin’s natural resistance to UVB, the type of rays that make skin burn, by 30.

So, if your skin would go red after ten minutes in the sun, putting on SPF 30 means it shouldn’t start burning for 300 minutes, or five hours.

All SPFs must also protect against UVA rays, which don’t burn, but cause invisible damage that results in premature skin ageing and an increased risk of cancer.

The problem is that you’ll only get that level of protection if you apply 2mg of product to every square centimetre of skin. And it’s likely that we’ll apply less of everyday cosmetics such as foundation or primer containing SPF than we do suncream.

Dr Sam Bunting, a cosmetic dermatologist, says: ‘You should be using a dedicated sun protection product every single day, regardless of what SPF claims are on your moisturiser or make-up.’

To investigate these products, we enlisted the help of L’Atelier Aesthetics on London’s Harley Street and Visia, their skin imaging camera, which shows how much UVA light is reaching the skin.

In these pictures, the light blue patches of skin indicate poor levels of protection. The darker the skin in the picture, the better protected it is.

The machine also scores how well the skin is protected from the UV light from 1 to 100.

The results were quite shocking . . .