A while back, a visitor asked us “How can I turn my tanning bed into a 10 minute system?”

Technically, you can’t. Salons are subject to a ton of regulations, but if you are talking about a home tanning bed, then you can have it similar to a 10 minute system, although I don’t personally recommend it. First some background:

Tanning lamps are not rated as 10 or 20 minutes, only beds are. This is because the same lamp will tan very differently, depending on that bed’s electronics, cooling system, reflectors and more. Obviously there are “hotter” lamps that are used in 10 minutes beds, so why can’t you just use those and have a 10 minute bed? Good question.

You CAN install 9.5% lamps in your home tanning bed, and the session time will likely be something around 10 minutes if you took the time (and expense) to get it recertified. What you WON’T get, however, is a great tan. Most genuine 10 minute beds use more than 24 lamps (over 50 is common) so you are getting more than just high UVB. You just can’t compare the two beds in a 10 minute session. And even so, most 10 minute commercial beds won’t get you as dark as a 20 minute bed because they have lower UVA, which is what does the actual bronzing.

You see, a “hotter” lamp is not really hotter. What some call hot lamps are just higher UVB and lower UVA. If you take a 2% lamp and measure it next to a 9.5% lamp, you will see they both put out about the same amount of UV total. The difference is how much is UVA and how much is UVB. Since UVB is what BURNS you (but stimulates melanin) and UVA seldom burns you (but causes that melanin to turn brown) people get confused. They install the 9.5% lamps, and they get RED really fast, but red isn’t tan. It’s sunburn. So in the end, they spend less time in total exposure because they can’t take longer sessions with the “hotter” bulbs, so they get less tan.

You have to decide what you want, and sorry, but you can’t have it all. If you want faster tans (at the price of darkness) then high UVB is fine. If you want darker tans (at the price of speed) then lower UVB is the right choice. The only way to get FASTER and DARKER is to use more lamps, and it is pretty hard to add more lamps to an existing tanning bed.

The only exception (maybe) is to use RUVA lamps, if your bed has narrow enough lamp spacing. Most 24 lamp beds will do this fine. These have reflectors built inside the lamp, and give you about 30% more total UV because the UV generated isn’t lost behind the lamp. Pick a good 5% RUVA lamp for typical 15 minute tanning session, or a 2.6% for a SUPER DARK 20 minute session. Generally, RUVA lamps cost about $2 to $3 more per lamp and they don’t last as long because they run hotter (temperature wise) in the bed, due to the reflector reflecting heat and light.

Just be careful jumping up to hotter UVB lamps and don’t get burned. My recommendation is to stay in the 2.6% to 6.5% range, and get RUVA lamps if that isn’t fast enough.