Does lemon juice remove fake tan?

If you’ve just Googled ‘does lemon juice remove fake tan’ we’re guessing you’ve bungled your application and need something to fix it asap! Luckily, you’ve hit the nail on the head — you can use fresh lemon juice to help lighten a fake tan but there’s a method to it. That means you shouldn’t just sit in a bath full of lemon juice and hope for the best!

What you need to do is combine lemon juice with brown sugar to make a lemony body scrub. This natural exfoliator is brilliant because (1) you can make it with household ingredients so you don’t have to step outside looking stripy and (2) the rough texture of the sugar will slough off the cells on the top surface of your skin and lighten your tan faster.

Rub your home-made exfoliator onto your skin in circular motions to gently dampen down any patchy bits of colour and even up streaky areas. You might need to repeat this step a few times over a couple of days to see a difference.

A soak in the bath will also help, simply because water naturally makes a tan fade faster, but adding bath oil will speed up the process. Other tips on how to remove fake tan include bypassing moisturiser, visiting the steam room and going for a swim in a chlorinated pool.