Should I be buying branded sun lotion?

MSE_Laura_F

Or will supermarket and other cheap versions do just as well?

MSE_Oliver

Transcript of the video above:

Obviously it's very important to practise safe sun, but if you go for branded sun lotion, then it can be very expensive. You can easily spend £5 to £10, even up to £20 for 200ml. But as we're filming this, the cheapest non-branded sun lotion is under £3. Question is, is it safe to go for the cheaper stuff?

Well, we spoke to the British Skincare Foundation who told us that when you're choosing sun cream, then rather than looking at the retailer or the price, the two most important factors are SPF and the UVA rating. I’ve got some sun cream here, so you can see the SPF is 50+. It’s recommended to go for 30 or above. 

And you've got the UVA here, too. It's recommended to go for four stars or five stars. And a lot of the cheap sunscreen will have this highly rated SPF and UVA too. So you can downshift  and save money and still be safe. 

Another tip on sun cream is to turn the bottle around. The reason for that is because you've got this little image here of an open tub with a number. It’ll usually be 24, 18 or 12 like we've got here, and that is the number of months that this sunscreen is still going to be effective after you've opened it.  So our tip for sun cream is to write the date that you've opened it, as we've done here, and then  you can look at it the next time you go on holiday and think, ‘right, I don't need to go out and buy any more sun cream because this one is still good’.