Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Friends With Benefits:

Spray savant

Terry Hunter gives the gift of golden glow

Terry Hunter

Leila Navidi

Bronzed owner Terry Hunter

Click to enlarge photo

Hunter says a spray tan typically lasts five to eight days, but sometimes a touch-up is required at the last minute, when clients can't make it back to the salon. The solution? Bronzed Tan Spray Cans. The cans are specially formulated for every skin tone (medium to light and medium to dark) and are as close as you'll come outside the salon to Hunter's magic touch. Available at Bronzed, salons at Caesars Palace and Treasure Island, and online at bronzedtan.com.

He's been a dancer onstage in Las Vegas and a manicurist by trade, but what Terry Hunter really wanted to do was spray tan.

So five years ago, after spending a year formulating solutions for instant, natural color, he opened Bronzed, a tanning salon located in a strip mall at 4480 Paradise Road, across from the Hard Rock Hotel.

"I actually opened the store not thinking it's going to take off as well as it is," Hunter said, "but 50 percent of my business is in one room."

That room, of course, is the spray tan room, where everyone from models and dancers to singers and actresses strip down to their birthday suits for a brush, or should we say spray, with greatness.

"People go 'How do people feel about you being a guy?' and I tell them, first of all, I'm looking at my work, not yours. I really could care less and I've seen it all. ... There's nothing that I have not seen."

Sometimes, Hunter says, a limo will simply pull up to the salon's back door and out will pop one of Hollywood's A-listers. And on the off chance that a burnt orange mess (a la MTV's Jersey Shore) stops by, he'll do his best to please.

"Some people want that. They will come in and say, 'I want to be over the top.' I have no problem doing that."

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