Skincare 101: always wear sun cream. “Heard it all before”, we hear you say. But while we all know important it is to slather on liberal amounts of SPF in the fight against skin cancer and premature ageing, even the best of us slip from time to time.
You can hardly blame us Vitamin D-starved Brits for flinging ourselves in the sun as soon as summertime hits, especially now the long winter nights are drawing in and the heatwave feels like a distant memory.
The downside, of course, is dealing with the resulting sun damage. Freckles, pigmentation, discolouration: those long weekends on the beach might have seemed fun at the time, but the unsightly fallout can takes years to remedy.
That’s why one Reddit user by the name of NeverMeant125 has gone viral after sharing astonishing before-and-after photos of her sun damage treatment.
An avid sun-worshipper, NeverMeant125 explains how she never used to wear suncream or moisturise when she was in her teens, sharing a photo of herself aged 24 with a densely freckled complexion.
“In high school and in to college, I tanned regularly,” she writes in the post. “The texture of my skin was awful because it was so dry; I honestly wore a lot of makeup back then because I didn’t like how my skin looked. ”
So, she developed her own anti-ageing skincare regime designed to “target the melasma and overall unevenness” of her complexion.
In the side-by-side comparison photo of herself aged 28, the sun damage is radically reduced, revealing a skin tone that positively glows. While NeverMeant125 credits a mixture of cleansers, serums, and chemical exfoliators, she also highlights a couple of hard-working products she believes contributed to the transformation.
“I think it was the vitamin C serum and then wearing sunscreen every single day even when I’m not getting any sun,” she writes in the thread.
As for the miracle-working products? NeverMeant125 swears by SilkNaturals Facelift Vitamin C serum, and First Aid Beauty 5 in 1 Face Cream SPF 30, which she applies religiously every morning.
Come evening, she switches to the CeraVe cleanser, the SilkNaturals AHA toner and MUAC retinol. Before going to bed, she moisturises with Kiehls midnight recovery oil.
Of course, preventative sun protection is always the way forward. Taking care of your skin with sunscreen now will pay off, rather than waiting to repair all the damage from those long hot weekend minibreaks later in life.
Since you’re here, why not read up on our guide to finding the right sun protection for your skin (and hair).
Moral of the story? Always wear sunscreen.
