In order for their products to be certified as broad-spectrum in the United States, sunscreen companies have to prove to the Food and Drug Administration that their sunscreen can block both UVA and UVB light. As a result, many use physical ingredients, which are less likely to cause an allergic reaction: They’re “considered relatively inert, meaning we believe that they don’t really interact with your skin that much,” says Ginette Okoye, the chair of dermatology at Howard University Hospital. The problem is, physical ingredients are the ones that leave a white cast.

Because the FDA regulates sunscreen as a drug instead of as a cosmetic, U.S. companies are especially limited in their choices of protective ingredients, whether chemical or physical. The FDA has been criticized for being slow to approve new ingredients, especially compared to Asian and European countries, which tend to have more ingredients available. Because of the long approval process, U.S. sunscreen companies can be laser focused on just getting effective treatments out. Okoye points out that these companies don’t necessarily consider the appearance angle. “The purpose of sunscreen is for skin-cancer prevention. They measure success not by how it looks, but how it prevents skin cancer or sunburn,” she says.

But companies are starting to think more about addressing how their products feel and appear on skin of color. At first, “the larger companies never thought that people of color would spend their dollar on sunscreen, because people of color have a mentality of ‘Black don’t crack,’” says Shontay Lundy, the founder of Black Girl Sunscreen, a company that designs sunscreen specifically for black women. Now both older, larger companies, such as CeraVe, Banana Boat, and Supergoop!, and new black-owned skin-care companies—such as Black Girl Sunscreen and Bolden USA, a skin-care company for women of color—have started tinkering more with traditional formulas, with different complexions in mind.

Holly Thaggard, Supergoop!’s founder, points out that zinc oxide, one of the most popular ingredients used in physical sunscreens, for instance, comes in hundreds of different varieties. “If it’s our goal to bring something to market that is more skin compatible with regard to color, we have some options,” she says. On top of using different iterations of zinc oxide, Supergoop! has also added a tint to its physical sunscreens to make them blend in better with a wider range of skin colors.

CeraVe has reduced the physical ingredient zinc oxide to nanoparticles in some of its products, which lessens the white cast left on skin. But doing so can lessen the zinc’s effectiveness, and Reddit threads say the sunscreen can still leave a cast. (CeraVe didn’t respond to a request for comment through its owner, L’Oréal.) Banana Boat, meanwhile, simply offers a variety of physical and chemical sunscreens instead of just one particular type. “We encourage consumers to select sunscreen based on their skin type, activity level, and exposure need,” says Samuel Vona, the director of research and development at Edgewell Personal Care, the company that owns Banana Boat.