Do You Really Need Sunscreen Indoors?
Product photography by Perkin Gotohio
Let's be honest: most of us skip sunscreen on days we don't leave the house. I did it for years. The logic feels sound. No sun, no sunscreen. Why put on another layer to sit in a condo with the blinds or curtains half closed? The real answer is that it depends on where you sit and for how long.
There are two kinds of UV we care about. UVB is the one that burns. Ordinary window glass blocks most of it, which is why you can sit by a window all afternoon and not go red. UVA is the one that ages you, and it goes through glass just fine. It's the reason there's that famous photo of the truck driver whose left side of the face, the window side, looks a good ten years older than the right after decades on the road.
UVA is also the sneakier one because you don't feel it. No warmth, no redness, no immediate change on your skin. But over time there will be a slow build up of lines, sagging and dark spots that shows up in your forties. So if your desk is beside a window, or you work in a glass-walled office, or you spend an hour a day in a car, you are getting UVA. Not as much as at the beach, but every day, for years. Dermatologists call this incidental exposure.
This is also why the PA rating on a sunscreen matters more than the SPF number for indoor days. SPF measures UVB protection. PA, the pluses, measures UVA. For a window seat, look for PA+++ at least.
If your WFH setup is in an interior room, or the curtains stay closed, or you're nowhere near a window for most of the day, you can skip the sunscreen. Screens, too. You'll see "blue light protection" on sunscreen labels now, and I understand the appeal when you're on a laptop ten hours a day. But the blue light from a screen is a tiny fraction of what you get from the sun, and the research on skin damage from screens is thin, mostly done at exposures far higher than a workday. I wouldn't buy a sunscreen for that reason. If it happens to be on the label, fine, but it's not why you're putting it on.
The thing about staying home though is that you rarely fully stay home. You step out for coffee. You do some errands, maybe have lunch. Fifteen minutes here and there at noon is not nothing, and on those days you're doing it with bare skin because you decided at 7am that you weren't going out.
This, more than the window, is what changed my mind. I put sunscreen on every morning now whether I have plans or not. Deciding each day turned out to be harder than just doing it!
I've been using Hello Glow Vitamin C Sun Care Cream SPF 55 PA+++ (P240) for exactly these days. It's a cream, but it goes on light and sinks in without the greasy slip I associate with the word. There's no white cast, which still isn't a given with local sunscreens, so I can wear it with nothing else on and not look grey on a video call. It smells lightly citrusy, which I like more than I expected to. Most sunscreens smell like sunscreen.
The vitamin C is a nice extra for an indoor-day product, since it's an antioxidant and that's a sensible thing to pair with UV protection. I'd treat it as a bonus rather than the reason to buy. The reason to buy is SPF 55 PA+++ at P240 in a comfortable texture. The PA+++ is the important bit if you’re sitting by a window.
Last note: if you're by a window all day, reapply once in the afternoon. If you went out at lunch, reapply when you get back! Nobody does this perfectly, including me. Most days I just apply once in the morning but hey - it’s better than nothing.
