Last Updated on February 22, 2026 by Giorgia Guazzarotti
What’s the best sunburn feet treatment? If you’re like me, you never thought about it until your feet are all red and swollen. And then you’re like, how did this happen? The truth is, your feet are one of the most vulnerable parts of your body to sunburn. Think about it: you slather sunscreen on your face, your shoulders, the back of your neck – and then you spend the whole day in flip flops with your feet completely forgotten. And because you’re on holiday, or at the park, or just having a good day, you don’t notice until the sun goes down and you take your shoes off and suddenly the damage is impossible to miss. *sighs* This article is going to tell you what actually helps, what’s a waste of time, and what means you need to stop googling and go see a doctor.
What Is A Sunburn, Actually?
A sunburn isn’t just your skin throwing a little tantrum. It’s a real injury. Here’s how it happens: when UV light hits your skin, it damages the DNA inside your skin cells. Your body responds by flooding the sunburned area with blood and fluid to try to fix things. That’s the redness, the swelling, the heat, and that horrible sensitivity where even a bedsheet touching your feet feels like too much. It also doesn’t show up straight away, which is why sunburn is so sneaky. You feel a bit warm in the afternoon, you think nothing of it, and then you wake up the next morning and “hello sunburn!”
Feet are especially vulnerable because the skin there barely ever sees the sun, so it has zero tolerance built up for UV exposure. Add the fact that sand and water reflect UV rays back up at you from below, that your sunscreen probably washed off hours before you got out of the water, and that most people don’t even think to protect their feet in the first place – and honestly, it’s a wonder this doesn’t happen more often.
Sunburn Feed Treatments: What To Do
So you got a sunburn. Here’s what to do right now to speed up the healing process:
1. Avoid Sun Exposure
If you’re still outside reading this, go inside. I mean it. Every extra minute of sun exposure on already-burned skin is making things worse, not just staying the same. If you’re already in, stay in. Just putting a bit of sunscreen on top and then going back into direct sunlight isn’t going to help things. Like it or not, your feet need to avoid the sun right now.
2. Cool Your Feet Down
The first thing you want to do is cool the affected area. A cool water foot bath is honestly one of the best things you can do right here, right now. Fill a small tub or a washing up bowl with cool water (not ice cold, not a cold shower turned up full blast) and just soak your feet for fifteen to twenty minutes. It brings down the heat, it reduces that burning sensation, and it just feels like relief.
Do not put an ice pack directly on sunburnt skin. I know it’s tempting. It feels like it should help. But shocking already-damaged skin with something that cold can actually cause further damage on top of what you’ve already got. In case you’re wondering, cool compresses or a cool shower work too.
3. Moisturise
After your cool bath soak, pat your feet dry gently (don’t rub!) and put on a moisturiser straight away. The reason you do it while the skin is still slightly damp is that you’re locking moisture in rather than just sitting cream on top of dry skin. Go fragrance-free if you can. Anything with alcohol, perfume, or “refreshing” ingredients is just going to sting and make things worse.
Aloe vera gel is fine here. The science on aloe vera for burns is genuinely encouraging: a meta-analysis of 371 patients found that aloe vera shortened healing time by nearly 9 days compared to controls. Put it on.. Just make sure you’re using pure aloe gel, not some bright green product that’s mostly fragrance and colouring.
4. Take An Anti-Inflammatory Medication
This is actually one of the more useful things you can do. Ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin – these are real anti-inflammatory medications that address the actual inflammatory response happening in your skin, not just mask the pain. Counter pain relievers like these won’t magically speed up how fast the sunburn heals (honestly, almost nothing will – more on that in a moment), but they will make the next couple of days significantly more bearable. Take them as directed, ideally starting soon after you notice the burn.
5. Drink Plenty Of Water
This sounds like generic wellness advice but it actually matters here. Sunburn pulls fluid toward the skin’s surface. It can genuinely dehydrate you. Drink lots of water, more than you usually would, especially if you were also in the heat for most of the day.
6. Elevate Your Feet If They’re Swelling.
If the tops of your feet are puffy as well as red, try lying down and propping your feet up above the level of your heart. It helps drain the fluid that’s pooled there. A couple of pillows under your ankles while you watch TV tonight will make a real difference by morning.
7. Wear Sunscreen
And, of course, don’t forget to slather broad-spectrum sunscreen on your feet before you leave the house. Reapply every two hours, and every single time you come out of the water. A wide-brimmed hat won’t help your feet, but protective clothing and actually wearing footwear when you’re not actively on the beach will. Open-toed shoes are great but they’re not sunscreen.
What NOT To Do
The internet can sometimes be like the Wild West. So many treatment that promise pain relied, no matter the severity of the burn. But, a lot of them don’t work and can actually make tings works. Here’s what to avoid to heal sunburned first faster.
- Apple cider vinegar. People swear by this for everything and it’s not going to help your sunburnt skin. Acidic stuff on damaged skin = more irritation, not less.
- Essential oils. Same problem. Some of them are actually phototoxic, meaning they can make sun damage worse. Just leave them out of this.
- Popping blisters. If your sunburn has developed blisters, that’s a second-degree burn, and those blisters are there for a reason. They’re protecting the raw skin underneath while it heals. Pop them and you’ve opened a wound that can get infected. Signs of infection to watch for: the area getting more painful rather than less, any kind of discharge, red streaking spreading out from the burn, or the skin feeling hot and getting worse after a couple of days instead of improving.
- Hydrocortisone cream. You might have heard this suggested for sunburn. The evidence is honestly underwhelming; topical steroids haven’t been shown to make much difference to how sunburn heals. It’s not going to hurt you in a mild case, but don’t expect it to be a game-changer.
When You Actually Need Medical Help
Most sunburns – even really painful ones – are first-degree burns, and they heal at home within about a week. Peeling skin in the days afterward is completely normal; that’s just the dead skin cells sloughing off as your body replaces them from underneath. Try not to peel it yourself, because the skin underneath isn’t ready yet. But some situations genuinely need more than home remedies.
Go and get medical treatment if you have a fever, chills, nausea, or feel dizzy or faint – those are symptoms of sun poisoning, which is a systemic reaction that goes beyond the skin and can get serious quickly. It’s also worth getting immediate medical attention if blisters cover a large area of your feet, if there are signs of infection, or if your symptoms are getting worse rather than better after a few days. If you’re dealing with a young child with severe sunburn, or someone who already has a family history of skin cancer or a history of bad skin reactions – see a healthcare provider sooner rather than later.
The Bottom Line
Look, you probably already knew that spending six hours barefoot on a beach in August was going to have consequences. The sunburn already happened. What matters now is that you treat it properly, give your skin the time it actually needs to heal, and don’t make things worse by going rogue with vinegar and essential oils at midnight. Your feet carry you everywhere. They deserve five minutes of sunscreen in the morning, and they deserve decent care when you’ve let them down. Next summer, a little broad-spectrum SPF on the tops of your feet before you leave the house. That’s it. That’s the whole secret. Until then – cool water, ibuprofen, aloe, and rest.
