Tattoo Aftercare

How long does it take a tattoo to heal?

How long it takes a tattoo to heal depends on several factors:

• How much trauma to the skin- an outline session, fine line, blackwork, or minimal shading will heal faster than color, black and grey realism, or blackout.

• The condition of your skin- if your skin tends to be dry, or during winter months when everybody’s skin gets dry, it will take longer for the dead skin and itching to go away.

• Your health and metabolIsm- if you’re younger, healthier, with a faster metabolism, your tattoos will heal faster. If you are older, have chronic health conditions, a slower metabolism, or if you’re under a lot of stress while healing the tattoo, your tattoo may take longer to heal.

After considering all those factors, a tattoo will take up to 2 weeks on the faster side, and 4 to 6 weeks on the slower side. You know your tattoo is done healing when there is no wrinkly, shiny, itchy, or flaky skin on the surface and it looks just like the rest of your skin. Except cooler!

Tattoo Aftercare

There are 2 ways to take care of your tattoos depending on your tolerance for adhesives. If you’ve never had an allergic or irritated reaction to adhesives on your skin (think band-aids), try the Recovery Derm-Shield (or similar brand alternative) route. If you know your skin doesn’t like the adhesive bandages, move on to the old-school method.

Healing a Tattoo with Recovery Derm-Shield

Recovery Derm-Shield is the brand many artists (myself included) prefer. The material is more flexible than other brands, so it doesn’t pull as much on the skin.

At the end of your session, your artist will clean and dry your fresh tattoo, then apply the adhesive bandage product, sometimes in strips and pieces for larger work. If you’re working on a large piece like a sleeve or back piece, anything that covers a lot of area and requires multiple sessions, or if you just regularly get tattooed, I recommend buying your own to keep at home. It is very common for the first bandage to require replacement, especially for Color-heavy sessions.

You will notice after about an hour or so, and in the next couple days, an ink sack like the one pictured above will form.

What is this ink sack? Is an ink bubble normal?

Yes! Your body is producing platelets and plasma to heal your skin. The bandage keeps the ink from leaking out everywhere and letting your healing wound (which is exactly what a fresh tattoo is) come into contact with contaminants which could cause Infection or allergic reaction.

Why is the ink coming out of my tattoo?

A tattoo is a deposit of ink in the Dermis layer of the skin, which is the second layer underneath the Epidermis. If anybody around you in elementary or middle school ever told you “Your epidermis is showing” this was their way of proudly exclaiming they had just learned that the epidermis is the outer layer of your skin. The epidermis is constantly being shed and regenerated, and during the tattoo process, the needle passes through the epidermis to get to the dermis, and leaves ink behind. As the dermis regenerates, the body pushes the ink out through the plasma. The fluid sack under the bandage is a mixture of blood, plasma, and ink from the epidermis layer.

What do I do if my tattoo bandage is leaking?

If fluid is escaping the barrier of the bandage, you need to change the bandage. If you don’t have a replacement piece, move on to the old-school method.

Why do you need to change the bandage? Because the bandage is a protective barrier to keep the fluid in and the contaminants out. If fluid is escaping, that means the barrier has been breached. If the barrier has been breached, you don’t want to risk trapping contaminants under the bandage with your fresh wound. Better to let it breathe and keep it clean than to allow bacteria to multiply in the ideal, hot, wet conditions created by your bandage.

If your bandage does not leak, keep it on for 3 to 7 days maximum. The longer you leave it on, the smoother the healing process, but also the product does begin to break down.

Personal anecdote: I was getting my back piece worked on when the city of Richmond announced that a water pump at the city had failed. Many people in our city were without water, and everybody had to boil their water before consumption or hand-washing for 6 whole days. For me, healing a fresh tattoo, I was so glad my bandage remained intact because I didn’t have to worry about getting contaminated water on it in the shower. However, when I finally took it off on the 7th day, the plastic in the bandage had started to disintegrate and separate from the adhesive layer. So even after taking it off in the shower, I still had a lot of the adhesive left on my skin.

When you go to take the bandage off, make sure you do so in the shower, under warm to hot water. Use the water to help break up the adhesive as you pull down on the bandage. If you’re taking off the bandage within the first few days there will be fluid, so the shower is a good way to keep from making a mess, too. If you’ve waited a little longer, often the fluid will have dried up or reabsorbed into the skin.

After cleaning the tattoo gently with a mild soap, moisturize, moisturize, moisturize. Don’t use a petroleum-based product like aquaphor, Vaseline, bacitracin, or neosporin. Do use a fragrance-free lotion or cocoa/shea butter, especially anything that says things like “ultra intense healing moisture!” I personally use Griffin Salve during tattoos and as aftercare. Please check the ingredients of any product you use to make sure you’re not allergic to any of them. If you have adhesive residue on your skin like I did, products like Griffin Salve can help remove it.

Healing a tattoo the old-school way

Back in my early days, we would send the client home with their tattoo covered in ointment with a plastic-wrap or dry-loc bandage taped on it. If you have an allergy to adhesives, your artist will likely do the same as we did back then. The point is to keep your tattoo from coming into contact with any contaminants. During the first 24-48 hours, the tattoo is an open wound.

Don’t go to the gym!!!!

Gyms, hospitals, these are places crawling with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and viruses. Your tattoo could leak on the equipment which is gross for other people, or it could come in contact with these bacteria and viruses and cause an infection for you. This could destroy your tattoo or worse! A badly infected tattoo can lead the body into a life-threatening state of sepsis.

Don’t go swimming or take a bath!

Aside from whatever bacteria may be lurking in the water, do you remember when you were a kid and you’d skin your knee one day and go swimming the next, and the scab would get all gooey and white or yellow? That’s what could happen to your tattoo! Tattoo ruined. Forever.

Don’t go out in the sun!

Keep your tattoo covered with clothing during the first 3 days (better yet, avoid the sun as much as possible because sunlight does actually reach the skin through your clothes) and spf 50 or higher after that. The sun’s harmful rays damage the skin and break up the pigment in your tattoo.

DON’T TOUCH A FRESH TATTOO

Again, a fresh tattoo is an open wound. Where have your hands been? Did you just wash them and dry them with a clean paper towel? No? Then don’t touch the tattoo. Yes? Great, you can now use your clean fingies to clean and/or moisturize the tattoo.

For the first 3 days of healing a tattoo without a bandage, wash gently with mild soap 2-3 times per day, and immediately moisturize. Moisturize as often as you feel is necessary- if it’s itching or feels dry. Don’t put on so much that you can see it sitting there on top of the skin- just a little bit at a time until it feels better, shouldn’t be any more moisturized than the rest of your skin.

You can cover it with plastic wrap and tape at night during that period if you want to try to protect your sheets from the fluid seeping out. But a lot of times, the bandage will cause your skin to sweat and create more inky fluid, and then as you move in your sleep the bandage shifts and that fluid gets everywhere anyway. Try putting clean towels down on the bed underneath wherever your tattoo could touch.

After the first 3 days your tattoo is less vulnerable, though I still wouldn’t recommend the gym. You can baby it a little less, but now you’ll want to moisturize even more. From here until the tattoo is fully healed, it will be dry and even extremely itchy. Don’t scratch, don’t pick at the flaky skin. Just wash your hands and apply a little more aftercare ointment or moisturizer. I love Griffin Salve because it smells great and I usually only have to put it on once a day even during the most itchy stage.

Have any other questions? Feel free to contact me using the form below!