I had such an unexpected day today: I went to a BEACH and sat in the SUN. I went with two beach-experienced friends who coached me through the process, and I learned a lot; I took literal notes on a literal notepad. I applied sunscreen once before we left, and reapplied twice more while we were there, and STILL I would describe patches of my current skin color as fuschia, if I could spell fushcia, which spell-check assures me I cannot.
I put SPF 60 on my face/neck/eartops, and I wore a hat and sunglasses, and those regions seem fine so far. I started with SPF 50 on my shoulders/arms/chest/legs, and then re-upped with SPF 30 (the SPF 50 was a pump-bottle and I didn’t want to put it in my beach bag); my legs and lower arms are just faintly pink, but my chest and shoulders and upper arms are bright. I wonder if that bottle of SPF 50 might have been expired, or maybe the SPF 30 bottle was expired. Or maybe I am half-Dutch and an Indoors Type and never wear sleeveless or low-cut anything, and my never-public areas of skin would have been absolutely shocked by this experience no matter what. I had half an inch of cleavage showing today! CLEAVAGE!! Now it understands why I usually keep it protected!
Well! I would say the enormous defibrillator-level shot of vitamin D has nevertheless done me some extreme good. I am almost DAZED with it, or possibly it is mild sunstroke! I went home and drank a huge glass of water and a little can of pineapple juice and a regular can of diet Coke and another glass of water; and then after a couple hours I gingerly took my shirt off and used our aloe plant medicinally for the first time since purchasing it years ago, and put a nice layer of aloe all over the hot-pink areas. I let it dry (it smells a little…oniony? I did not expect that) while I CLEANED A BATHROOM (I am telling you: I am HIGH ON SUNSHINE), then washed my hands several times, then added a layer of Eucerin over the aloe. Now I am swanning around feeling wonderful but demanding sympathy.
May I recommend making friends who will do things like this with you? Actually, I cannot recommend it like that, because I didn’t even do that: these friends made friends with me. May I recommend coincidentally running into people who will make friends with you and then do things like this with you?
Also, may YOU recommend some after-sun products? I feel like I am going to wake up tomorrow feeling a little less swanny.
Oohhh fun. I have and adore a number of lands end rash guard/swim shirt things. Recommend for future. Long sleeve sun protection you can take off. Or put on. They’re often on stupid sale this time of year. I don’t care about color/matching my suits so I look at whatever is cheap and will fit. Often under $10. None of my bottoms match my tops either. Which is fine. The rash guards tend to coordinate with the bottoms.
I have a tendency to beach after 4pm because I like it better AND the beach is quieter AND it’s beautiful in the late afternoon/early evening AND it reduces the sunburn factor a whole lot. I also live within walking distaof a tragically underutilized beach so can go whenever. The children and I recently did evening swims for like 10 straight days. Then it rained and that takes us out for at least 36 hours (bacteria levels increase after a rain and before the tides can flush it out) and then we did like another 5 days. Delightful. A couple of times we were literally in the water long enough to get wet and do a quick float. Others it was more like 1/2 hour – 45 minutes.
Having said that I haven’t been sunburned in forever. The aloe is great. Apply, apply, apply. I also remember enjoying witch hazel applied with a cotton ball. Sometimes the witch hazel was refrigerated. Any sort of moisturizer you like/can stand will be helpful. The burn could be from defective sunscreen or lack of previous sun exposure to the burned areas. It would take some trial and error to figure that out.
Yay for your happy friend time at the beach.
As a fellow Dutch lass who would burn with less than 10 minutes of exposure, I have found the best is to take a wash cloth wrung out with cool water and lay it on the affected area. That seems to draw the heat out. Reapply often. Some creams and lotions hold the heat in (causing a deeper burn).
Despite being a fellow Burns Within Minutes, I have nothing to offer by way of advice. But I did love reading about your fun experience!
Hi – Florida girl here. Thick cream (I like Cetaphil cream) is your friend here. Also Ibuprofen will help. Mom used to make us cool oatmeal baths when we were kids. Haven’t done that in years, but I think it helped. My second piece of advice is for next time. Wear a sun shirt – any large, long-sleeved cotton or linen shirt. Wear it over your bathing suit. We start out wearing ours just when we’re lounging, but by mid-day we are wearing it in the water. I also have lightweight Turkish towels we throw over our legs if we’re getting a bit pink. (Sunburn increases quickly. Just a bit pink is your warning to find shade.) . We always say you can tell the native Floridians on the beach because we are the ones wearing clothes.
Oooh I love the beach, and sorry about the sunburn. Hawaiian Tropic makes an after-sun cream, and it smells nice too.
If it’s a bad burn, something with both aloe and lidocaine (or alternating aloe with lidocaine) might help. My youngest is very fair and we are a beach-going family so despite our best efforts, they did have a few bad burns in childhood, which is a source of guilt.
We’re all very fair in my family and burn quick as anything, so to be honest we stay in the shade as much as possible, including using a parasol at the beach (though we don’t go often). Direct sunlight for hours will always make me burn, though liberal application of factor 50 before going in the sun and then every couple of hours is a big help. We keep a bottle of after-sun in the fridge during summer – putting it on cold always feels better at least!
(it’s fuchsia – it’s named after the flowers that were named after a Mr Fuchs, which is the German word for fox – that’s how I remember)
I keep a bottle of aloe gel in the fridge for post-sun application. The cold gel is so soothing!!
Signed-
An Irish-Dutch woman of extreme translucence who burns after mere minutes in direct sunlight.
Reading this makes me almost as happy as having been on the sun myself!
I actually received lessons on sunscreen when I was working at a travel product shop. What I learned about SPF is this: the given number (SPF) increases the number of minutes you can stay in the sun without getting sunburned with the same amount. So, if your skin is light and normally burns ( = gets reddish) in one minute, applying SPF 50 will allow you to stay in the sun for 50 minutes. If you normally get sunburned in 10 minutes, SPF 50 gives you 500 minutes in the sun. After that, you need to stay out of the sun for the remainder of the day. REAPPLYING DOESNT HELP. You only reapply if you’ve been in the water or something like that, but you keep the original start time.
Apply sunscreen at least 20 minutes before going into the sun, and in summer stay out of the sun between 12-3pm (no amount of sunscreen/number of SPF is going to save you there).
I like Maui Vera for sun burns
After Sun Gel – Unscented | Maui Vera https://share.google/4Vo4WBx6tkO5hydpc
Found it years ago in Hawaii
My number one piece of pale-people-who-go-in-the-sun-regardless advice is that summer days start at 3 PM at the earliest, and ideally 5 PM. The UV rays are so much less likely to destroy you, and at least where I live it is still warm and pleasantly summery.
Failing that, hats, high collars, and long sleeves. Let your legs do the Vitamin D absorbing. And never ever ever forget to put sunscreen on the tops of your feed or backs of your hands.
Feet, not feed.
May I politely ask how/if this is your first visit to a beach?
It is a fair question, and a little difficult to answer! I HAVE been to beaches before, but I’d say 95% of my visits were as a child, and the point was always to SWIM, and then have lunch in the shade, and then swim some more, and then leave. And I have gone to lakes/oceans as an adult—but again, always where the point is to swim for awhile (often specifically avoiding the 10:00-2:00 time of day) and then leave, or else (in cooler weather) to walk along the packed sand and then leave. So I know how to sunscreen/dress/pack for THAT. But I am almost zero familiar with the kind of beach visit where it is many hours of sitting in the sun. It involves a whole new LIST of things, including coolers! ice! many hydrating beverages! beach chairs! hats! sunglasses! new lessons about sunscreen use and cover-up clothing! etc.!
As a very pale person who got sunburned to the point where it hurt to have clothing touch my sunburn when I was a child, the answer is aloe. Your plant is the best. If you don’t want to use up your plant, you can buy aloe. You do not need to buy the expensive 100% aloe but the high 90% is fine. If your sunburn really hurts, get the aloe with lidocaine.
Even though I’m a very much keep it until I use it up person, I’ve been replacing my body sunscreen each spring. I’d rather throw out some maybe expired, maybe not expired sunscreen than get a sunburn.
Good luck healing!
As someone who regularly turns fuchsia with a minor amount of sun exposure (my ancestors hail from cloudy countries), aloe and aspirin and lots of water is the cure. Aloe from the fridge is heavenly, fancy blue aloe in a bottle from the freezer will make you see god. If you have those little eyemasks you put in the fridge/freezer for puffy eyes or headaches they can help too with some areas like collarbone/cleavage.
If you are radiating heat, be careful with heavy creams that might trap the heat in your skin. You want to soothe the skin without putting the equivalent of a casserole cover over it.
Fuchsia is named after a German guy whose last name is Fuchs. The more you know!
As a redhead and person who has had many many sunburns (until I finally learned how to avoid them!), anything with Vitamin E in it for after a burn is great. Aloe feels good, but vitamin E is like a drink for your skin and it actually helps the burn fade without peeling.
I hope your skin heals up soon, but alas, I have no recommendations for the après-soleil experience. On the plus side, yeah, all that vitamin D! Plus making friends!
When I go out door knocking, which is about my only direct exposure to the sun, I put sunscreen on my shoulders and arms, underneath my t-shirt and long-sleeved (lightweight) cover-up shirt. And, of course, on my face, neck, ears, chest. And then cover my head with a hat.
When I was a child, every year our family took a week-long vacation at the Jersey shore (which is not the same as Jersey Shore). We had to play under the boardwalk during the hours from 10 to 2 pm, to avoid the sun.
Now you’re talking my language! As an Australian, the beach has always been a thing for us, but now being post-menopausal and no longer having children to be responsible for, things have changed!
I now have an obsession to going to a particular beach we can drive on; taking a marquee/gazebo and plenty of snacks; and dragging with me whichever other middle-aged women I think might enjoy it. But the big change is that I now find myself obsessed with actually going IN the water. Let’s not call it swimming because it isn’t that, but rather LOLLING, and even jumping around in the waves. So much fun. (I’m equally happy to do all this at a pool). So yes I totally understand and appreciate your friends for getting you to the beach! And sorry about the sunburn… just keep it cool with showers, wet cloths, creams and lotions.
I want to come to Australia and beach with you. I love a good loll in the ocean. When we go here I say we’re “going for a quick float” or “going for a float”. That is exactly what we do, wade in, immerse, float about for however long. My daughter will go a little further out and says she’s “going out to sea”.
Are you ready to go? I need to go out to sea once more time. “Out to sea” is MAYBE 50’ from shore. We have breakers at our beach (piles of rocks to break the waves). They’re not far at high tide and even closer at low. They also created tide pools in front of them. If she goes far enough “to sea” she’s back on land.
Swistle-Love that you had a good beach day with friends! I hope your sunburn fades quickly.
Did Edward and Paul heal OK from their various surgeries and injuries?
I am about to turn 50 this year, and I still fight my ‘fishbelly-white or tomato-red’ skin choices in the summer. You would think I would have learned by now! The only time any ‘usually under wraps’ regions were a tannish color is when I went tanning prior to my wedding. But that is something we no longer do.
I love an official swim shirt (or any lightweight, fast-drying material) shirt. I find short-sleeved is fine – it protects my shoulders, back, and cleavage, and I can handle protecting my forearms, neck, etc. area with sunscreen. My legs rarely burn, and I usually don’t protect them at all- even with SPF.
Is it too much to ask for just a light glazing? Like from fish-belly to slightly underdone pizza crust? Best I can get is freckles multiplying into one large darker area. Le sigh…..
Everyone else has already given the best remedies- aloe, solarcaine spray, and time. Hope you feeling slightly less heat-radiant, but still spirit-radiant now!
It is super stinky, but I have found white vinegar takes the sting out of a sunburn. I’ve put it in a spray bottle to avoid touching the burns, but you could probably cold washcloth it
I am one of those unfortunate souls who has incredibly pale skin (think “freshly plucked chicken”) and I don’t tan, I only ever burn. Even with very high SPF, if I go out in the sun for even a short length of time, I look like I was wrapped in tin foil and left outside for hours. Not fun. So, in terms of recommendations for treating a sunburn, I am not sure if you get this in your country, but I can *highly* recommend Nivea After Sun Cooling Spray. It has aloe vera and hyaluron in it and it cools the burn, takes away some of the sting, and moisturises the skin all at the same time. It also absorbs very quickly and it doesn’t leave your skin sticky so you can reapply it as much as needed. It works great in the first few days after a burn. Once the sting is gone, my next highly recommended step is moisturise liberally and frequently with a rich body lotion (preferably one meant for intense moisturising for very dry skin). It keeps the skin soft and supple and it also minimizes peeling.
I got myself a rash guard years ago because I was tired of my babies/toddlers yanking the top of my swimsuit down at the pool and helping me flash the public. I’ll never go back. I started with a short sleeved one and have since moved to long sleeve after discovering that I feel cooler with the rash guard than without. (As long as you are damp. The walk from the car to the pool is very humid.) I am starting to consider getting one to use as a shirt on non-pool days and perhaps carrying some kind of spray bottle to mist myself to stay damp. I feel like I may have something here with sun protection and staying cool but I will update if I ever get brave enough to do it.
I also wear a hat and sunglasses and generally look like I am in the witness protection program.
I have to wear a Rash Guard when at the beach or in a pool AND sit in the shade. I can normally buy it minimum of 50% off at Lands End. I still do sunscreen at home, but then only reapply on my face/ears/neck when I am at the beach, or after I come out of the water.