Help! We Love £100 Sunscreens!

Are expensive sunscreens ever worth it? Alice investigates after team TTG fell in love with some very luxurious sunscreen formulas this summer…

It’s time for a confession. It’s a perk of the job, ok, but I’m developing an alarming fondness for very expensive sunscreens. Luxurious, beautifully formulated products with a silky feel that settle without a hint of tacky stickiness. The big drawback … they cost about £100 a tube.

£100? What on earth?

The conversation around sunscreen and price is typically focused on whether the government can be persuaded to remove VAT (20%) from high-factor sunscreens, as they are considered a health essential rather than a cosmetic product. And there are plenty of sunscreens that are excellent value (you know I’m a huge fan of Altruist SPF50 which costs all of £11.50 for two 100ml tubes).

I’ll happily try out any sunscreen that comes into the office at The Tweakments Guide – we’re all about healthy skin here and using SPF daily is one simple thing we can all do to help keep our skin protected from the creeping pile-on effects of UV rays.

So I tend to slap them on before looking at the price, just to see what they’re like – their feel, their texture, their colour and their finish – and then I’m often startled to see their price. I used to fret about recommending the fabulous SkinCycles Lumina Shield (£65 for 80ml) – it’s lightweight and moisturising yet doesn’t make you all shiny – until I realised this price is entry-level when you’re moving into luxury territory.

One of my current favourites is the Intradermology Synergy 6 SPF50 which gives a gorgeous lightweight finish on any skin tone. The 100ml size costs a bracing £89 – though when you look at the product as an all-in-one high-tech antioxidant-rich moisturiser with a built-in SPF50 that makes skin look as if you have the Zoom ‘light blur’ effect in real life, it softens the cost a little. (We have the smaller size Synergy 6, 50ml, for a mere £54 in the Tweakments Guide shop.)

In fact the £95-sunscreen spot seems to be quite crowded, with products like La Mer The SPF50 UV Protecting Fluid Sunscreen, (£95 for 50ml), Dr David Jack’s All Day Long Daily Moisturiser with SPF 50 (£95 for 50ml), and 111 Skin’s Repair Sunscreen SPF50+ (£95 for 50ml) vying for attention.

I’m not the only one with this particular weakness. When I asked Becki Murray if she had the same, er, issue, she confessed she did. ‘I always feel a little guilty generously piling on the Augustinus Bader SPF (The Sunscreen, £105 for 50ml),’ she says, ‘because I can’t help but think how a 50 pence worth is probably worth about that amount if not more! It’s a catch 22 though, because being stingy with it means you won’t be suitably protected with its great spf50. What I will say is that I love the texture. A lot of sunscreens say they ‘feel like a lightweight moisturiser’ to apply, but this one actually does and in the summer I don’t feel the need to layer a moisturiser on top even with my slightly dry complexion  – which saves me a little on the rest of my routine.’

But there’s more. There’s the MZ Skin Expert UV Protector SPF50 (60ml, £110),  Dr Barbara Sturm Sun Drops SPF30 (£125 for 30ml) and Guerlain’s Orchidee Imperiale Brightening The Global UV Protector (30ml, £135) – all gorgeous, but…

Your key question will be: do these products do a better job than cheaper products? To which the answer is No. If they’re claiming to provide an SPF of whatever, with a certain amount of UVA protection, they will have evidence to prove it. So… these pricey products can only be there because, you know: choice. And, lots of people love them and buy them.

So, would you indulge in a luxurious sunscreen?