Best Dark Spot Treatment Reviews--Products

Best Dark Spot Treatment Reviews: SPOT TREATMENTS

We tried out a few dark spot faders to see how well they work. Although many need up to 12 weeks for ideal results, we checked in after two to four weeks, which chemist Ni'Kita Wilson says is often an in-house benchmark for companies when creating formulas. What we found:

PRODUCT	CLAIM	KEY INGREDIENTS	TESTER REVIEW
Osmotics Cosmeceuticals Lighten FX 3x Dark Spot Remover ($58, dermstore.com)	Works to lighten brown spots fast, with triple-strength formula.	Niacinamide, alpha arbutin and new biopeptides that break up discoloration.	Tester used it on her abdomen and noticed a slight difference in just two weeks. She describes the area as looking much paler.
Luminaze Brilliant Serum Concentrate ($135, Nordstrom)	Lightens darks spots and brightens skin.	Enzyme extracted from a wild mushroom that grows on tree bark in the Swiss Alps.	In less than four weeks, dark spots slightly faded and a new blemish seemed to heal faster.
Avène D-Pigment Dark Spot Corrector ($49, drugstores)	Clears skin and reduces hyperpigmenation by 81% in three months.	Melanyde, which claims to have 10 times the lightening effectiveness of skin-lightening kojic acid.	After religiously applying the cream nightly to the neck for three weeks, tester says it significantly faded her melasma.
Neutrogena Rapid Tone Repair ($20, drugstores)	Reduces the appearance of dark spots and improves skin clarity and tone in seven days.	Accelerated Retinol SA (retinol SA, glucose complex and hyaluronic acid) and vitamin C.	Surprisingly, in a week, it started to fade dark spots left on legs from bug bites. Our tester sometimes used the nighttime treatment during the day.
Peter Thomas Roth De-Spot ($75, Sephora)	Reduces darkened area 14.2% within two weeks.	Illumiscin, niacinamide and ActiWhite, which is comparable to 2% hydroquinone.	After only two weeks, our tester saw fading on cheeks, and overall, her skin was smoother.
Bremenn Dark Spot Eraser ($59, Ulta)	Minimizes the appearance of existing and future dark spots.	Candida, titanium dioxide and diacetyl boldine, which are all skin lighteners.	Our tester was also taking skin-healing zinc supplements at the time, but she considers this the fastest dark spot corrector she's used in 10 years.