How your skin heals after a sunburn

A sunburn follows a fairly predictable course, and understanding it helps you care for the skin appropriately at each stage rather than fighting the natural process.

Redness and warmth appear within hours and typically peak around a day after exposure, as blood rushes to the injured skin and inflammation builds. Pain and tenderness track the redness. Over the next several days, the body clears the damaged cells, and the skin often peels, this peeling is the shedding of cells so damaged by ultraviolet radiation that the body discards them rather than repairing them, replacing them with new skin beneath.

During healing, the priorities are gentle moisturizing to support the barrier, leaving peeling skin to slough on its own rather than picking or pulling it (which can scar and prolong recovery), and rigorously protecting the fragile new skin from any further sun. Most sunburns resolve within a week or two. What does not resolve is the cumulative cellular damage beneath the surface, which is why each burn matters long after the redness fades. The visible healing is only the surface story; the deeper significance is the lasting damage every burn leaves behind.

Related reading: How sunburns raise your skin cancer risk.