Lovely and lush

We all know the benefits of SPF, but it was easy to get burnt from the sun over the past few weeks.

According to experts at Lush, natural ingredients like oat milk, calamine and menthol crystals could be your best friends this summer.

Calamine has been touted as a super ingredient to soothe and calm red skin and could reduce the appearance of sunburn. It features in Lush’s new ice cream-inspired Mrs Whippy face mask. Sales of Mrs Whippy often increase during heatwaves.

Michelle Leahy, Product Inventor with Lush, said: “Calamine powder soothes and cools the skin, and is thought to calm irritation and itching. Mrs Whippy was created by a group of Lush superfans that came down to Lush’s home in Poole and spent the day at Carey's Secret Garden collecting natural ingredients and making skincare. We sat down together, and they came up with this face mask. They wanted it to be two colours, so it would swirl like raspberry ripple ice cream!”

Sales of another skin-calming formulation packed with soothing oat milk also increased by 24% in the summer months of last year. Sensitive-skin loving Skin Soothing Porridge combines cooling calamine, oat milk and moisturising honey.

Oat-infused, bestselling Dream Cream has been a staple product in Lush fans’ bathrooms since its launch in 1998.

Helen Ambrosen, Lush Co-Founder, said: “We make an infusion of oats and water that creates a very thin ‘porridge', which enables us to get the best out of the oats and onto the skin. The olive oil in the product is also lovely - it's a surface emollient that keeps the skin soft and from losing moisture. Oat milk is the magic!”