Types of Hyperpigmentation: Melasma, PIH, Sunspots and Freckles

Hyperpigmentation is an umbrella term, not a single condition. Underneath it sit several distinct types, each with its own trigger, its own appearance and its own timeline for fading. They share one mechanism: melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells in your skin, making more melanin than the surrounding tissue. That is where the similarity ends.

The mark left behind after a breakout, the symmetrical patch that appeared during pregnancy, the sharply defined spot on the back of a hand, and the freckles that darken every summer are four genuinely different things. They look different, they behave differently, and they respond differently.

This guide is about working out which one you have. If you already know and you want to move straight to the next stage, read what hyperpigmentation is and how it forms or go directly to how to get rid of dark spots.

How to Identify Your Type of Hyperpigmentation Fast

Most types of hyperpigmentation can be narrowed down at home in under a minute using six questions. You do not need a magnifying mirror or special lighting. You need daylight, a clean face and honest answers about your own history.

Colour

• Pink or red suggests something vascular, meaning blood vessels rather than pigment.
• Tan through to mid brown suggests melanin sitting relatively close to the surface.
• Grey-brown or blue-grey suggests melanin sitting deeper in the skin. Deeper pigment is slower to shift, so this shade tells you something about your timeline as well as your type.

Shape and edges

• Defined round or oval spots with crisp, obvious borders point one way.
• Diffuse, blotchy patches with edges that blur into surrounding skin point another.
• Ask yourself whether you could draw an outline around it. If you can, that is meaningful.

Location

• Marks sitting exactly where something happened, such as a healed spot or an ingrown hair.
• Patches in characteristic zones regardless of any history, such as across both cheeks or above the top lip.
• Marks only on areas that catch the most sun, including the backs of the hands, the shoulders and the chest.

Symmetry

• Does it mirror across both sides of your face in roughly the same place and shape?
• This single question separates melasma from almost everything else. Very little other than melasma appears in a matched pair.

Trigger

• Was there a breakout, blackhead, ingrown hair, burn, cut or irritating product first?
• Was there a hormonal change, such as pregnancy, hormonal contraception or HRT?
• Or did it simply accumulate quietly over years with no single event attached?

Seasonal behaviour

• Does it fade in winter and return in summer, or does it sit there all year regardless?
• This is the cleanest freckle-versus-sunspot signal available to you at home, and it costs nothing to check.

One more thing worth stating plainly. Every type covered in this article is flat. Run a clean fingertip over the mark with your eyes closed. If you feel a raised bump, an indentation or a patch of roughness, you are dealing with the difference between flat pigmentation and textured scarring, and pigmentation is not the whole story. Texture and pigment are separate concerns that often sit in the same place.

A caveat, stated once and meant sincerely. This is a guide for orientating yourself, not a clinical diagnosis. Anything that is changing in size, shape or colour, bleeding, itching persistently or behaving unlike anything else on your skin needs to be looked at by a GP or dermatologist. Skincare is not the right tool for that job.

With the framework in place, the most common type is the one most people meet first: the mark left behind after a breakout.

Post-Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation and Post-Inflammatory Erythema

If you have ever waited patiently for a spot to clear only to find a flat brown or pink mark sitting exactly where it was, you have met the two most common types of post-inflammatory pigmentation. They look similar enough to be confused constantly, and they are not the same thing.

Post-Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation (PIH)

Post inflammatory hyperpigmentation is flat discolouration that appears where inflammation has been. Brown, tan, dark brown or grey-brown, sitting level with the surrounding skin. Nothing raised, nothing indented, nothing rough.

The trigger list is broader than most people expect. Anything that inflames the skin can leave PIH behind:

• Breakouts and blackheads, particularly ones that have been squeezed
• Ingrown hairs after shaving or waxing
• Insect bites
• Burns, cuts and grazes
• Eczema and psoriasis flares
• Over-exfoliating, or using something considerably too harsh for your skin

That last point deserves attention, because it is self-inflicted and entirely avoidable. Aggressive exfoliation compromises the skin barrier, the barrier responds with inflammation, and inflammation is exactly what sets pigment production off. If your marks appeared after you started stacking actives, the priority is supporting a damaged skin barrier rather than adding anything further. There is a full guide on what to do if you have over-exfoliated if that sounds familiar.

PIH is asymmetrical and irregular by nature. It maps onto your history, not onto a pattern. Three marks on one cheek and one on the other is entirely normal, because that is where the spots were.

Colour gives you a clue about depth. Lighter skin tones often see pink through to light brown. Medium tones typically see mid brown. Deeper tones more often see dark brown or grey-brown, which indicates pigment sitting lower in the skin and a longer fade ahead.

There is a reason for that, and it is worth understanding rather than worrying about. Melanocytes are more active at baseline in richer skin tones. When an inflammatory trigger arrives, the pigment response is stronger and lasts longer. This is not a flaw in the skin. It does mean that for deeper skin tones, preventing inflammation in the first place matters more than chasing marks after the fact, which makes barrier care and gentle handling genuinely central rather than optional. Understanding breakouts and what causes them is often the more useful starting point than focusing on the marks alone.

Ingredients such as tranexamic acid are frequently discussed in this context because they work on the pigment pathway rather than by stripping the surface, which suits skin that is already inflamed. For the full picture, read post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation explained in full.

Post-Inflammatory Erythema (PIE)

PIE is the red or pink counterpart. Same trigger, completely different mechanism.

PIE is vascular, not pigmentary. What you are seeing is dilated or damaged capillaries sitting near the surface, left over from the inflammatory event. There is no excess melanin involved at all. That distinction matters, because ingredients that work on melanin have nothing to act on.

PIE is more commonly noticed on lighter skin tones. Confusingly, PIH can also present as pink in its early stages on lighter skin, which is precisely why the two get mixed up so often. If persistent facial redness is the wider issue, redness and what causes it covers the various causes properly.

How to Tell PIH and PIE Apart: The Press Test

This is the most useful practical tip in this article, and it takes five seconds.

Press a clean fingertip, or the edge of a clear drinking glass, firmly against the mark. Hold for a few seconds. Then look at what happened to the colour while pressure was applied.

• If the colour disappears or visibly blanches under pressure, it is vascular. That is PIE.
• If the colour stays exactly where it was, it is melanin-based. That is PIH.

The reason it works is straightforward. Pressure pushes blood out of the small vessels beneath the skin, so anything caused by those vessels temporarily vanishes. Melanin is deposited in skin cells and is not going anywhere, so it stays visible regardless of how hard you press. One test, two very different answers, and it costs nothing.

If your marks are flat and brown and you also want to understand how they differ from true indented or raised scarring, our guide to blemish scars and post-blemish marks draws that line clearly.

From marks caused by something that happened to your skin, we move to patches driven by something happening inside your body.

Melasma: Symmetrical Patches with a Hormonal Trigger

Melasma does not look like the other types, and once you have seen the pattern it is difficult to unsee.

Forget defined spots. Melasma presents as diffuse, blotchy patches with irregular, blurred edges covering broader areas of the face. There is rarely a clean border. The colour ranges from tan and light brown through to grey-brown and, in some cases, a distinctly bluish-grey.

Bilateral symmetry is the giveaway. Melasma almost always appears in mirrored patterns, in roughly matching positions on both sides of the face. If you have a patch on your left cheek and a comparable patch in a comparable place on your right, that symmetry is doing most of the diagnostic work for you.

The typical locations are consistent:

• Cheeks, often across the upper cheekbone
• Forehead, frequently across the full width
• Upper lip, common enough to have earned the informal nickname the “melasma moustache”. If that is where yours sits, pigmentation around the mouth goes into more detail
• Chin
• Bridge of the nose

Three things drive it. UV exposure is the most obvious. Hormonal change is the second, which is why melasma is so strongly associated with pregnancy, hormonal contraception and HRT. The third surprises people: heat. Not sunlight, heat itself. Saunas, hot yoga, standing over a hot stove and even prolonged hot showers can aggravate melasma independently of UV. If yours flares after a workout in a heated studio, that is not a coincidence.

Genetics plays a significant role too, so a family history of melasma is a strong signal. It is more common in women, and more common in medium to deeper skin tones.

Seasonally, melasma tends to darken through summer and often lightens somewhat in winter, though rarely does it disappear entirely the way freckles can.

One important note on pregnancy, kept high level. Several ingredients commonly discussed for pigmentation are not considered suitable during pregnancy or breastfeeding, retinol among them. Bakuchiol is the pregnancy-considered alternative that comes up most often. Rather than guess, read pregnancy-safe skincare and speak to your midwife or GP.

For everything beyond identification, what is melasma and how to treat it is the dedicated guide.

Melasma vs Hyperpigmentation: What People Usually Mean

Let us answer this head on, because the phrasing causes real confusion.

Melasma is not a separate thing from hyperpigmentation. It is one specific type within hyperpigmentation. Every patch of melasma is hyperpigmentation. Not all hyperpigmentation is melasma. The comparison is a little like asking about the difference between a labrador and a dog.

So why does it get searched so often? Because “hyperpigmentation” gets used casually as a catch-all for any dark mark, particularly post-blemish marks and sunspots. When someone asks about melasma versus hyperpigmentation, what they usually mean is: is what I am looking at specifically melasma, or is it one of the other types?

That question does have a real answer, and you already have the tools for it. Go back to symmetry. Melasma mirrors across the face in broad, soft-edged patches. Then go back to history. Melasma tends to arrive alongside a hormonal change or after years of sun exposure, not immediately after a single spot cleared. If your marks are isolated, asymmetrical and each one traces back to something specific that happened, you are almost certainly looking at PIH rather than melasma. If broader unevenness is the concern, uneven skin tone covers that territory.

From the type driven by hormones, we move to the two types driven by the sun.

Sunspots and Freckles: The Two Sun-Driven Types

Both are caused by UV. Both are flat and brown. They are frequently lumped together and they are not remotely the same thing.

Sunspots (Solar Lentigines)

Solar lentigines, commonly called sunspots or age spots, are flat, well-defined spots with clear, sharp borders. Each spot tends to be a uniform colour throughout, ranging from tan to dark brown, without the gradient you see at the edges of melasma.

They are noticeably larger than freckles, from a few millimetres up to a centimetre or more, and individual spots can slowly enlarge over years.

Location is the strongest clue. Sunspots appear only on areas with the heaviest cumulative sun exposure:

• The face, particularly the cheekbones, temples and forehead
• The backs of the hands
• The forearms
• The shoulders, chest and decolletage

A dark, defined spot on the back of your hand is a very strong sunspot signal. Very little else turns up there.

The cause is cumulative, long-term UV exposure rather than any single burn, which is why sun spots on face and hands typically begin appearing from around 40 onwards. They represent decades of accumulated exposure finally becoming visible.

The important behavioural point: sunspots do not fade in winter. They are essentially fixed. Left alone, they stay put and slowly gain company.

Because they sit in the upper layers, surface exfoliation using something such as glycolic acid is often part of the wider conversation, alongside antioxidant support from vitamin C. Our 15% Vitamin C + EGF Serum sits in that category, and the Glycolic Acid Toner is an evening-only product, used one to three times weekly to begin with, and not suitable for sensitive skin. If your skin is easily irritated, the PHA Toner is the gentler alternative. Before introducing any acid, read using acids in your skincare routine.

Freckles (Ephelides)

Ephelides, the clinical name for true freckles, are small, flat, scattered spots, typically between 1mm and 3mm across. They are lighter in tone than sunspots, running from light tan to medium brown, with softer, less defined borders that blend gently into surrounding skin.

Freckles are genetically driven. They are strongly associated with fair skin and with red or fair hair, and they usually make their first appearance in early childhood rather than in adulthood.

Here is the part that surprises people: UV does not create freckles from nothing. It activates and darkens a genetic tendency that was already there. The sun is the switch, not the cause.

And they behave accordingly. Freckles fade in winter and darken in summer, reliably, year after year.

Worth saying clearly: freckles are not sun damage, they are not a flaw, and they do not need correcting. Plenty of people actively like theirs. If yours are simply part of your face, this section is information rather than an invitation to change anything.

Freckles vs Sunspots: How to Tell Them Apart

Start with the single cleanest differentiator: freckles fade in winter, sunspots do not. If you want to test this without waiting for the seasons to turn, find a clear photo of yourself from February and one from August and compare the same area of your face. Freckles will look noticeably lighter and sparser in the winter photograph. Sunspots will look identical in both.

Beyond seasonality, the distinguishing features are consistent:

• Cause. Freckles are a genetic predisposition activated by UV. Sunspots are cumulative UV damage built up over decades.
• Size. Freckles run roughly 1mm to 3mm. Sunspots run from a few millimetres up to a centimetre or more.
• Edges. Freckle borders are softer and blend outwards. Sunspot borders are sharply demarcated, as though drawn on.
• Colour consistency. Freckles are lighter and more variable across a cluster. Sunspots are darker and uniform within each individual spot.
• Age of onset. Freckles appear in early childhood. Sunspots typically appear from around 40 onwards.
• Distribution. Freckles cluster across the nose and cheeks in scattered groups. Sunspots appear as isolated individual spots on the most sun-exposed areas, including the hands.

The underlying biology explains the seasonal difference. In freckles, existing melanocytes simply produce more melanin when UV triggers them, and there is no increase in the number of melanocytes present. Turn the UV down and pigment production winds back down with it. In solar lentigines, long-term photodamage has produced a more persistent structural change in the skin, so removing the trigger does not reverse what has already been built. That is the whole reason one fades every autumn and the other does not.

An honest caveat to finish: it is entirely possible to have both. Someone with childhood freckles who has spent forty years outdoors may well have freckles across the nose and genuine solar lentigines on the cheekbones and hands at the same time. Assess each area on its own merits rather than deciding your whole face is one thing.

Whichever of the two you have, SPF and why it matters is the common thread. Dewy Sunscreen SPF 30 is the daily option if you need one.

From pigmentation on the face and body, we come to the one area readers consistently misread.

Under-Eye Pigmentation and Dark Circles

Under-eye darkness is routinely mistaken for pigmentation, and quite often it is not pigmentation at all. There are three distinct mechanisms and they need very different responses.

• Vascular. The skin under the eye is the thinnest on the body, around 0.5mm compared with roughly 2mm elsewhere on the face. Blood vessels sitting beneath show through as blue or purple shadowing. This is typically worse with tiredness, during allergy season and first thing in the morning.
• Pigmentary. Genuine excess melanin, driven by UV exposure, hormones or chronic rubbing. Brown or grey-brown rather than blue. More commonly seen in medium to deeper skin tones. This one is a pigmentation concern.
• Structural. Volume loss and hollowing beneath the eye creating a shadow. No pigment involved whatsoever, and no topical product resolves a shadow cast by anatomy.

The press test works here too. Gently stretching the skin sideways is also revealing: vascular and structural darkness shifts or lightens as the skin moves, while true pigment stays exactly where it is.

Worth flagging one crossover. Chronic eye rubbing during allergy season causes repeated micro-inflammation, and that repeated inflammation can drive genuine pigmentary darkening over time. So allergies can produce both the vascular and the pigmentary version at once.

Be honest with yourself about which you have, because if your under-eye darkness is vascular or structural, a pigmentation-focused approach will not achieve much. Our guide to dark circles and under-eye puffiness breaks all three down properly. Caffeine Eye Cream targets the look of puffiness and fatigue rather than pigment.

Having covered each type in isolation, it is worth addressing the reality that most people are not dealing with only one.

Can You Have More Than One Type at Once, and What to Do Next

Yes, and It Is Very Common

If you read the sections above and recognised your skin in more than one of them, you are not confused. Overlapping types are the norm rather than the exception.

The most realistic combinations:

• Blemish-prone skin plus a hormonal history very often means PIH and melasma sitting on the same face at once.
• Anyone over 40 with a history of breakouts may reasonably have both sunspots and PIH.
• Freckles and sunspots frequently coexist, which is exactly why the seasonal test earns its place.

The practical move is to assess each affected area independently rather than forcing your whole face into a single category. The patch above your lip and the mark on your jawline may genuinely be two different things with two different histories.

Overlapping types are not a complication to worry about. They are simply information.

What to Do Next

Daily SPF is the single non-negotiable across every type in this article. Every type here is either caused by UV, worsened by UV, or prevented from fading by UV. Without it, everything else is uphill. Dewy Sunscreen SPF 30 is our daily option, what SPF actually does explains the mechanism, and does sunscreen really help with hyperpigmentationanswers the obvious follow-up question.

Beyond that, different types respond to different ingredient approaches, which is precisely why identification came first. The products most relevant to the types covered here, by name:

• Tranexamic Acid Serum as the pigmentation-focused option
• 10% Niacinamide Serum for evening out tone, with more on niacinamide and how and when to use niacinamide
• 15% Vitamin C + EGF Serum for brightness and antioxidant support
• PHA Toner as the gentler option for sensitive or easily irritated skin
• 10% Azelaic Acid Serum for Redness Relief, with background on azelaic acid

If you are weighing brightening ingredients against each other, vitamin C vs niacinamide vs exosomes compares them directly. If retinol is already in your routine, check what not to mix with retinol before adding anything else. For the full next stage, how to get rid of dark spots picks up where this article stops.

Whatever you introduce, introduce it on its own and patch test first. Here is why you should patch test.

And once more, because it matters: anything changing in size, shape or colour warrants a GP or dermatologist rather than a serum.

The Fastest Way to Recognise Your Type of Pigmentation

Identifying which of the types of hyperpigmentation you have is not a technicality. It determines whether what you do next actually works.

The fastest signals, one line each. Symmetry across both sides of the face points to melasma. A mark sitting where a blemish used to be points to PIH. Colour that presses away under a fingertip points to PIE. Fading every winter points to freckles. Sharply defined spots on sun-exposed skin that never fade point to sunspots.

Daily SPF is the one constant across all of them. And set your expectations honestly: fading is measured in months of consistency, not weeks.

If you want the full picture, read the complete hyperpigmentation guide.

Clear guidance. Proven ingredients. Real results.

Where to Go From Here

Whichever type you have landed on, here is where to head next.

• Read the complete hyperpigmentation guide
• Shop the hyperpigmentation collection
• Take our Skincare Quiz for a personalised routine
• Build your own routine
• Chat to askINKEY for personalised advice

Products In This Article

• Tranexamic Acid Serum - £16.00 / 30ml
• 15% Vitamin C + EGF Serum - £15.00 / 30ml
• 10% Niacinamide Serum - £10.00 / 30ml
• Glycolic Acid Toner - £13.00 / 100ml
• PHA Toner - £13.00
• 10% Azelaic Acid Serum for Redness Relief - £16.00 / 30ml
• Dewy Sunscreen SPF 30 - £15.00 / 50ml
• Hyaluronic Acid Serum - £9.00