Tanning Salons in Lighthouse Point

Boca Tanning Club salons bronze clients with the help of super tanning beds and booths, as well as UV-free VersaSpa spray-tanning booths. Clients walk past the painted vines, rocks, and rainforest-themed decor before stepping into the spray-tanning booths, which gild limbs in 60 seconds, or into a super bed, which caramelizes skin in less time than a traditional bed. In private rooms, technicians wielding airbrush systems custom shade and contour muscles while de-emphasizing vestigial tails.

Anticipating the arrival of a client he knows both by name and music preference, Glow Tanning Center co-owner Brandon Kemp strides down to the client’s usual chamber and tunes its Pandora radio to her favorite tunes. Kemp also helps clients navigate the center's three levels of UV tanning by creating custom "game plans" and by unfurling a spool of thread to follow back to the front door. The plans combine the use of tanning lotions with a varying regime of visits to the center’s high-pressure UWE beds and speedy upright booths that clients use in 10-minute increments.

In an adjacent room, co-owner Meg Dewall loads a color cartridge into her airbrush. Dewall has airbrushed the toned abs of fitness models and bodybuilders and the rippling upper lips of Elvis impersonators for a decade. Through years of creating quick, custom tans, she has come to rely on a bronzer from Norvell, a formula that eschews dyes because they can cause skin to look orange. The equipment is minimal, so she can also bring her monochrome art kit and a special tent to hotel rooms and private residences for tanning parties and convenient touchups.

South Beach Tanning Company’s vibrant decor and high-powered tanning beds create a chic club atmosphere in which clients can perfect a South Beach tan suited for Miami’s white sand. Brightly colored lights illuminate open ceilings and purple, orange, and blue walls. The beach theme extends into each private room, where UV beds bronze clients’ skin, creating an appearance usually achieved by spending hours on sandy shores or spending three minutes wrestling the sun. Surround-sound systems play music as guests tan, while air conditioning keeps bodies pleasantly cool. The salon also houses automated VersaSpa spray-tanning booths for a UV-free alternative.

A wildly successful alternative to traditional day spas—its more than 300 locations blanket 36 states and half a dozen countries—Planet Beach Contempo Spa is a futuristic relaxation station where state-of-the-art machines administer all the spa and tanning services. These friendly automatons sometimes replace familiar treatments, as in the Luminous facial, a light-based service that delivers blemish-busting results similar to those of a conventional facial. But other equipment maps out new spa territory entirely: the Hydro-Derma Fusion chamber moisturizes the whole body with nutrient-rich steam in order to offset the effects of a dry climate or a rear-end collision with a salt truck. Other machines whiten teeth, spray tan skin, and massage muscles.

Planet Beach operates on a gym-style membership system, meaning that members purchase packages or pay flat monthly rates. As members spend more time at the spa, they get to know the helpful assistants who are always on hand to demonstrate how to use the equipment without activating its ability to cry.

Magic Tan gives clients access to two levels of UV tanning beds as well as the Sudatonic body-wrap system, which uses far-infrared heat to improve skin tone and texture and reduce the appearance of cellulite and stretch marks. Magic Tan's specialty, however, is Norvell airbrush spray tans, which staffers custom mix according to the instructions tattooed on the bottoms of their clients' feet.

Paradise Tan expedites a hot, slow process with three levels of UV beds and two spray-tanning options along with a team of mobile airbrush artists ready to take their spray tans on the road. Five UV beds and booths boast sessions no longer than 15 minutes; the high-pressure Supersonic shortens the time to 7 minutes and the Sungate boasts special facial bulbs and shoulder tanners. Armed with Norvell solutions and a light touch that has brought them to weddings, beauty pageants, and body-building events, the airbrush technicians evenly coat limbs in a natural, golden color that develops in as little as 1 hour. A VersaSpa spray-tan booth spritzes a custom misting to let visitors emerge bearing a sun-kissed appearance without the gaudy hues of the sun's cut-rate lipstick. Lotions from Designer Skin and Ed Hardy speed the process by increasing circulation and moisture, and Tykini bikinis imported from Brazil reveal results. Evincing their dedication to vitamin D, the staff keeps the salon open every night until 10 p.m.