Best Spray Sunscreens of 2026

Be conscious of where you use sprays. “Make sure you apply spray sunscreen in a well-ventilated area,” says Ashita Kapoor, associate director of product safety at Consumer Reports. Sprays can cause lung irritation if you accidentally breathe them in. Some contain titanium dioxide, which, when inhaled in large amounts, has been linked to cancer in rodent studies. And sprays are flammable. “When applying spray sunscreen, make sure you are not near a grill or another heat or open flame source,” she says. Even when your spray sunscreen is thoroughly rubbed in and dry, you should still stay away from flames.

These spray sunscreens are at the top of our ratings. CR members can delve into our full sunscreen ratings of dozens of lotion, spray, facial, and stick products.

We test only broad-spectrum sunscreens labeled SPF 30 or above. Most of the sunscreens are water-resistant. But because some facial sunscreens are meant for everyday use—not just when you’ll be swimming or sweating—a few of the ones we tested aren’t water-resistant. We’ve clearly marked which ones are (and for how long) and which ones aren’t in our ratings. 

CR uses a testing protocol that’s modeled on the one the Food and Drug Administration requires sunscreen manufacturers to use. But as is the case with other products we test that have government or industry standards, we use those standards as benchmarks and have developed our own methodology to identify differences in performance and give consumers a comparative evaluation.

“We buy the sunscreens for our tests off the shelf, the way consumers would,” says Susan Booth, who oversees our sunscreen testing. “We use three samples, preferably from different manufacturing batches [lots], of each product.” 

For SPF, we test the sunscreens on three people, which is fewer than the FDA’s protocol calls for, but we use a statistical analysis to verify our results. 

To check SPF in water-resistant sunscreens, a technician applies a standard amount of each sunscreen to a 2x3-inch rectangle on each panelist’s back. Then the panelists soak in a tub of water for 40 or 80 minutes, depending on the product’s water-resistance claim. (We perform the test after water immersion only for water-resistant sunscreens because if a sunscreen holds up on wet skin, it should hold up on dry skin.) Afterward, smaller sections of the rectangle are exposed to five or six intensities of UV light from a sun simulator for a set time based on how quickly the panelist’s skin burns without protection. (We also use a reference sunscreen with known performance to ensure the accuracy of the testing.) About a day later, a trained technician examines the areas for redness and determines the SPF.

The testing for non-water-resistant sunscreens involves the same steps—applying the sunscreen, exposing the skin to UV light, and examining the skin the next day—except for water immersion.

In order for a sunscreen to be labeled broad-spectrum, the FDA requires that it protect against UVA and UVB rays. To test for UVA protection, we apply sunscreen to plastic plates, pass UV light through, and measure the amount of UVA and UVB rays that are absorbed. That information is used to calculate our UVA score.

This process is similar to the one used in the critical wavelength test that the FDA requires sunscreen manufacturers to do in order to label their products broad-spectrum. But we apply the results differently. The critical wavelength test is a pass/fail test, and just as you can pass a test with either an A or a D grade, some sunscreens do a much better job of defending against UVA than others. That’s why we use a method similar to that used in other countries, which allows us to measure the critical wavelength and the level of UVA protection a sunscreen provides.