Is there a difference between pink and blue tanning lamps? Is one better than the other?

People perceive pink as a 'warm' color, while blue is 'cool'. One of the enduring reasons for indoor tanning is the relaxation and rest from a session in the bed. Early on, warm tone lamps were the choice to enhance this aspect of our indoor tanning services. Today, successful salons concentrate on making their entire establishment warm and inviting for their customers. Retail merchandising experts all over the world employ this knowledge, installing warmer general lighting in establishments where the owner benefits from more leisurely customer traffic patterns, and installing cooler lighting when the owner prefers customers move more quickly about their business. Examples are Nordstrom's versus the auto supply store.

With current technology, tanning lamps appear light blue in their natural phosphor state. To create a warm or pink lamp, a small amount of strong red phosphor is added. This changes the appearance of the lamp only when it is operating. The small percentage of color phosphor displaces a like amount of UV-generating phosphor, so chemists adjust the phosphor blend during lamp design to compensate. This can be done to deliver any appearance by adding, for example, green or even more blue. This is not as easy as it sounds, because strong color phosphors are not available in every hue, and because the human eye cannot perceive some colors as well as it can others. We "see" yellow and yellow-green very well, but we don't see blue all that well.

Either color lamp will tan you if properly designed- it's the phosphor mix, not the color of the lamp that affects tanning. You won't notice the color until you "light" the lamps up. Even then you may not notice a color difference unless the lamps are next to each other, giving you a comparison. Therefore, as the salon owner, you will decide whether you want your beds to give off a warm glow or a cool glow. Once your tanners are in the bed, they should not notice a difference either since they will be wearing protective eyewear. We recommend against random mixing of different color lamps due to unnecessary questions inevitably raised by the tanners.