Solariums in WA: Banned Since 2016 & What to Do Instead

Every month, people around Mandurah and Rockingham search for a solarium, a sunbed, a tanning bed near them, and come up empty. That is not bad luck. Commercial solariums have been illegal in Western Australia since 1 January 2016, and by the end of that year every Australian state had shut them down. If you have been hunting for one, this is the explanation, and the honest version of what to do instead.

Why solariums were banned

Sunbeds work by doing exactly what the sun does, faster: they bathe your skin in concentrated UVA and UVB radiation, both listed as carcinogens by the World Health Organization. The evidence linking solarium use to melanoma, particularly in people who started young, became impossible for regulators to ignore, and Australia moved as a bloc. WA’s ban on commercial tanning units took effect on 1 January 2016 under the state’s radiation safety laws.

Are they coming back?

No. There is no serious push anywhere in Australia to reverse the bans, and the direction of regulation has been toward tightening, not loosening. Privately owned sunbeds in homes were not covered by the commercial ban, but running one as a business, taking money for sessions, is illegal and has been prosecuted. A second-hand sunbed in someone’s garage also has none of the servicing, timing controls or hygiene of the old salons, which were themselves not safe enough to keep.

What replaced them

The colour moved to spray tanning, and honestly, the result moved past what a sunbed ever produced. A professional spray tan develops in hours rather than weeks of sessions, applies evenly with no strap lines, and involves zero UV: the colour comes from DHA, a sugar-derived compound that reacts with the very outer layer of your skin. When it fades, it fades the way a real tan does, and none of it ages your skin. I wrote a fuller comparison of sun colour versus sprayed colour in the sunbaking article if you want the detail.

The honest trade-offs

A spray tan is cosmetic colour only. It gives you no vitamin D, and no sun protection either, you wear sunscreen outdoors exactly as before. It lasts seven to ten days with decent aftercare rather than the weeks a UV tan held on for. Those are the trade-offs; skipping the melanoma risk is the other side of the ledger.

If you were looking for a sunbed near Mandurah

The studio here in Secret Harbour does one thing: a full body spray tan with Australian-made Naked Tan solution, $50 flat, in a private women-only home studio. Fifteen minutes to apply, wash and wear from twenty minutes, developed by the evening. If a sunbed was the plan, this is the version of the plan that is still legal, and kinder to your skin by a distance.