Sienna X Dark Glowing Self Tan

January is a rotten month. It’s cold and dark, everyone’s skint, and half of us have already abandoned our diets. My birthday falls in the middle of it, which never helps, and I always end up looking tired, pasty and a bit miserable. A little colour is a cheap way to look less like a ghost, and Sienna X, the brand behind the glow of the Skyfall cast, is a good place to start.

What it is and how it applies

Sienna X Dark Glowing Self Tan is formulated with green tea and calendula to improve skin tone and texture while it develops colour. It’s a deep tan with 8% DHA (the tanning agent) that builds up over six to eight hours, and it left me completely streak-free without the tell-tale digestive-biscuit smell a lot of tanners have. The bottle suggests latex-free gloves for application, but I prefer a tanning mitt. The lotion is runny and light, absorbs quickly and doesn’t leave you sticky.

Apply it to clean, well-exfoliated skin that you’ve washed at least 12 hours beforehand. That gives your natural oils and pH time to rebalance, so the colour develops closer to your natural tone rather than grabbing unevenly.

How it wears

I got about a week of good colour out of it, and as it faded it did so evenly, without patching or streaking. It smells lovely on application too, slightly sweet and gently fruity, and once you’ve rinsed off there’s no lingering fragrance on the skin at all.

A professional tan with James Harknett

My first experience of Sienna X was a full-body spray tan with James Harknett, one of the most respected professional tanning experts around, at the W Hotel’s Away Spa in London. It was the most natural and even artificial tan I’ve had, genuinely undetectable. Given my skin never tans on its own, that’s saying something.

A tip from James that I’ve used ever since: dab a little light moisturiser onto knees, elbows and wrists before you tan. It stops the colour grabbing on those drier, creased areas and lets everything blend evenly. It makes a real difference.

If you fancy trying it, Sienna X’s Dark Glowing Self Tan is still around, and a professional spray is well worth it if you’d rather leave it to an expert.