A little thread about tan colours

I adore tan dolls! I do not have a 'company' preference yet, but I definitely prefer a "tan" to just "natural skin" like I have seen some companies refer to as tan. Best example I can give for this is Granado. Granado's Tan, Sunshine, and Bronze colors look perfect to me. I like even darker colors too, but it has to be a perfect fit for a character I want the doll to represent.

 

I find that these dolls are often so small that details just naturally stand out better on darker skintones and look more human as a result.

I'm one of those people who has a character first more often than not and then goes looking for a doll, so I don't often get to choose a doll to be of a certain colour vs. another. It's either fitting the character or its not. That being said, I think the majority of my characters are medium-to-dark toned, so I do find myself pondering "tan" skin a lot.

I've had Iplehouse's Special Real (lovely cooler/olive-r kind of brown), the old tan skin from Atelier Momoni (very rich dark brown), suntan (I think?) from Peakswoods (the name is a fitting description of that color), tan from Aimerai (deeper caramel-y sort of brown, which can also be sanded without marks!) and tan from LLT which was sort of a caramel but darker with more reddish hue. Right now I only have one doll, a Mydolling Heeah in the old Tan B skin, which I believe is darker than anything she offers now. It's a little bit warmer than Iple's Real Skin, but it's a wonderful color. I believe I bought one of the last Tan B Heeahs too.

I haven't tried any of the glow tan resins though, I bet they look amazing. Maybe there will be another doll or two in my future (eyeing a couple of Iplehouse FID's right now) that I can try in that more translucent quality. I don't really display my dolls (they live in their boxes when not in use) so I'm not to worried about them catching too much sun.

 

I quite like tan dolls! Fairyland's tan is quite nice I think, I'd love to have a tan Minifee Chloe one day...

 

@Dynamint I don't know if Spiritdoll has changed their tan much, but I have a tan Spiritdoll and it's a lovely caramel-y colour. It's very warm in person and it looks like a natural human skintone (though I find I'd prefer a cool blue tan for this character).

 

I really like tan skin dolls, but it's a bit hard for me to judge from pictures if they're going to really be right for the characters that I want to get, so I've been a little gun-shy about getting one.

I've got at least 2 characters I want to shell that would require me to get tan skin, though. Latinx with heavy native ancestry... I want them to look a very certain way.

 

I prefer tan (or darker) resin to the extremely pale shades. Tan in particular is nice, because it's versatile, and it tends to yellow less noticeably. Oriental/Copper/Tan shades seem to have more warmth and realism, which I find appealing. However, it depends on the doll. My first bjd was an MDR "Strawberry" Fang, and I think she's absolutely beautiful in her pale pinkyness.

The only real downside to tan is that it seems to be hard to photograph. It can be hard to shop from photographs online for that reason. Even on the website of the company or creator of the doll in question, no two pictures of the resin may look the same.

 

I'm a 'one' doll person, but if I were the kind of owner who did doll pairings, i'd enjoy pairing dolls of different skintones from light to dark. I'd also like to pair feminine guys with masculine girls, but that's another thread

 

I really like the tan colors- my second doll is a tan Myou Silvia who is absolutely gorgeous. She's also the only tan doll I've seen in person, so I can't really compare Myou's tan to other companies.
If one thinks of the doll's skin as the blank canvas of a painting- what we put on that canvas is framed and interpreted differently by that canvas. A particular piece of clothing may look and feel different depending on the doll's skin/size/face/wig/etc... and having a variety of different looking dolls means one has more canvases to play with... I also like putting cold colors and warm colors in contrast. Most skin tones are on the warm side though- so lights and darks are the next best thing.
Only problem I have with these darker shades (as others have pointed out) is that most people aren't just one shade of a color. Myou's tan color is only slightly darker than the color of my arms, but she is the same tan all over, and well, I have a really bad farmers tan, so the effect is wildly different.
It'd be awesome to see more natural pigmentation patterns- and while I'm sure this can be achieved with a really extensive body blush, it seems like a lot of work for someone who hasn't developed that skill set yet. More amusing would be to see dolls with realistic tans/tan lines (and sunburns).

 

I really like tan dolls but I think Luts’ real brown is not really the right colour I’m looking for. Hoping to get a tan volks doll one day and see if that matched better.

 

I currently have a doll with RSW from Luts and another one on the way with RSW too. I think I tend to lean towards the ghostly white dolls because as a kid I was always made fun of for my terribly pale skin and seeing beautiful dolls with ghost-like skin makes me feel better about my appearance. I want to diversify my dolls and try new skin tones but I don't see too many people on youtube ordering tan dolls and I'm scared to go purely off brand photos since I know it can look different in person. If any of you have tan dolls that you love the skin color of let me know what company you bought them from so hopefully I can fall in love with one too!!

 

I don't know how much this will help, because her skin tone is discontinued, but I adore my Supiadoll Noa's tan. They replaced it with another tan that also looks beautiful, but here's the old tan for reference. You never know when one will crop up on the marketplace I guess.

 

Omg!!! Her skin is so lovely I'll for sure take a look at their new tan thank you!

 

I think Withdoll has beautiful darker tones, but theyre not offered regularly. :<



I looooove Brown Tan UV in particular.

 

Iplehouse also offers a lot of lovely tan options!



I will say that I do NOT reccomend tan from Dollzone or Doll Chateau. I love the two companies but they have a very bad track record for their tans being super inconsistent. Some batches will turn out spectacular and then the next batch will be this terrible fake tan orange color that is just so awful. They have discontinued their tans several times and then later started offering tan again after finding a new formula but I have seen that turn out with mixed results several times so in my eyes ordering a tan from them is just too much of a wildcard. And I would only buy a secondhand tan from them so I would know what I was getting agead of time.

 

While I'm not sure I would call it tan, as its more of an olivey/tan-ish normal resin, I absolutely love Souldoll's Sandy Brown. It is so beautiful in person.

 

Omg those are all such gorgeous colors!!! I wish all brands had that kind of array of colors!

 

This is why I was scared and was asking about this! Thank you for letting me know since Dollzone and Doll Chateau are two of my favorite companies.

 

I can tell you 2 tans I do NOT care for as much, and I have one tan doll from each:5Stardoll and AoD. They are too olive and also very shiny without work and the latter photographs olive to the point of feeling greenish, I always color correct his skin to be less green. I guess I just prefer more ruddy tans. I have only seen photos but I will be trying some hybrids of 2 of my tan bodies with Alchemic Labo Paradise skin Unoa face plates and hands, I really like all the owner photos I've seen of those so far, and with them, 2 particular characters of mine will have their proper skin tones, thus ending my experiments with tans!

 

I'm not going to lie I do sort of regret not getting DoD Kalix in tan. I really liked the Dream of Doll tan colour, and had planned to eventually get Camine in it but the company disappeared before I had the chance :[

I'm actually really grateful for this thread because it'll give me a chance to check out all these recommendations!

 

Island Doll has several tans. I think they are all lovely, but I personally only have the darkest one. Granado is also a good company for tans.