Checking your own skin
A self-exam takes about ten minutes and needs two mirrors. Its real value is not spotting a melanoma from first principles. It is knowing your own skin well enough to notice when something changes.
Last reviewed August 21, 2026. Every factual claim on this page is sourced below. Guidance and regulations change, and a page can fall behind its sources: check the linked source before acting on anything here.
How often
Monthly is the usual recommendation: examine your skin head to toe, including skin not normally exposed to the sun, looking for new spots or changes to existing moles. Pick a fixed date, the first of the month or the day you pay a recurring bill, because the whole method depends on comparison over time and irregular checks give you nothing to compare against.
The five-step method
This is the AAD’s sequence. Do it in good light, after a shower.
- “Examine your body front and back in a full-length mirror, then look at the right and left sides with your arms raised.”
- “Bend your elbows and look carefully at your forearms, underarms, fingernails, and palms.”
- Inspect “the backs of your legs and feet, the spaces between your toes, your toenails, and the soles of your feet.”
- “Examine the back of your neck and scalp with a hand mirror. Part your hair for a closer look at your scalp.”
- “Check your back and buttocks with a hand mirror.”
Steps three and four are the ones people skip, and they are disproportionately important. The scalp, the soles, and the spaces between the toes are all places melanoma is regularly found late simply because nobody looked.
Ask someone to check your back
The single highest-yield improvement to a self-exam is a second person. Your back and the back of your scalp are genuinely hard to inspect with a hand mirror, and they are common sites. If you live with someone, trade: it takes two minutes each and removes the largest blind spot in the whole exercise.
Photographing your skin so the photos are actually useful
Most people’s mole photos are useless a year later, because nothing about them is consistent. A few rules fix that:
- Same light, every time. One fixed spot in your home, daylight or the same lamp. Changing light changes apparent color more than most lesions do.
- Include a scale. Put a ruler, or a coin, in the frame next to the spot. Without one you cannot tell growth from a closer camera.
- Shoot wide, then close. One photo showing the region, left shoulder blade or right calf, so you can find the same spot again, then one close-up.
- Turn the flash off and hold steady rather than using it. Flash flattens color variation, which is exactly the thing you are trying to track.
- Name the files by date and location (2026-08-21-left-calf.jpg) and keep them in one folder. A folder of dated photos is the single most useful thing you can bring to an appointment.
Photographs are a record, not an assessment. Their job is to answer one factual question at your next appointment, has this changed and over what period, which a dermatologist genuinely cannot answer from a single visit and you can. They do not tell you whether a spot is dangerous, and no app that reads them can reliably tell you either. See AI tools, honestly assessed.
What to write down
Alongside the photos, keep a short note for anything you are watching: where it is, when you first noticed it, what has changed, and whether it itches, bleeds, or has been sore. “It has been there for years and looks the same” and “I first saw it in June and it has gotten darker” lead to completely different appointments.
Next
What the warning signs actually are →
Finding a dermatologist →
Sources
- American Academy of Dermatology, How to check your skin for skin cancer, the five-step method.
- DermNet, Check your skin today, monthly head-to-toe self-examination.
- American Academy of Dermatology, Skin cancer in people of color.