Melasma is a common acquired hyperpigmented skin disease, commonly seen in women over 30 years old, manifesting as symmetrical, flaky (mostly symmetrical triangular) light brown spots on both sides of the cheeks, often confused with brown spots because of the similarity between the onset of the site and brown spots, but brown spots appear as dotted dark brown spots. The causes of melasma are very complicated, including sun exposure, endocrine disorders, menstrual disorders, insomnia, staying up late, etc. But in fact, it is difficult to accurately check the single cause of melasma, which is mostly caused by multiple causes. However, pathological research shows that melanocytes in melasma lesions have enhanced function and increased melanin production. Based on the above two pathological changes, the treatment of melasma nowadays often starts from two aspects: trying to inhibit melanin synthesis and reducing the number of melanocytes. Inhibition of melanin synthesis is usually treated by topical drugs, and the commonly used topical drugs include hydroquinone, arbutin, glutathione and topical vitamin C. Among them, hydroquinone has been frequently reported in newspapers recently. Arbutin, glutathione and topical VitC are safer, but the effect of arbutin is too slow, so glutathione and topical VitC are most commonly used, but the price of glutathione is very high and the effect is not as good as topical VitC. Reducing the number of melanocytes, on the other hand, is mainly treated by laser or color light. There was a time when laser treatment for chloasma was popular under the advertisement, however, later on, we found that although laser treatment is easy to remove the spots in the short term, it is very easy to recur, and the symptoms are more serious when recurring than before treatment, resulting in more and more serious consequences. Research and analysis suggest that the problem of traditional laser treatment for melasma may be due to the more serious local inflammatory reaction produced by high-energy laser, which eventually causes obvious post-inflammatory pigmentation, coupled with the recurrence of melasma resulting in heavier and heavier treatment. Therefore, nowadays, melasma is more often treated with color light, although the effect is slower than that of laser, and usually requires three or five times of treatment, the recurrence rate is much lower than that of laser, and even if the recurrence occurs, it rarely appears heavier than that before laser treatment. However, the difficulty of color light is that it requires much higher operating skills than laser, so it is best to find an experienced doctor to operate it. Of course, the recurrence rate of long-term treatment of melasma with laser or color light alone is still relatively high, so it is usually combined with topical drugs to reduce the recurrence rate. So nowadays, it is common to use color light or laser to quickly remove the spots, while topical medications are used to treat the root cause, and it is also important to pay attention to recurrence factors.