Tattoo Aftercare – Your Complete Guide

How To Care For A Tattoo On The First Day

When you first get your tattoo, your artist will commonly treat it with an antibacterial ointment and bandage it with plastic wrap, paper towels, and sometimes tape. Warn your artist if you have an allergy to adhesive so that they can use a different kind of tape for you. Ultimately, how they bandage it doesn’t matter too much—you’ll want to take off that bandage after about two hours so that your tattoo can begin its healing process. Keeping it on any longer encourages bacteria to grow in the dark, moist area of your tattoo. Giving it some air prevents infection and speeds up healing.

Remove Your Tattoo Bandage

When you remove your bandage, make sure you clean, disinfect, and dry your hands. Bacteria cover everyone’s hands as a rule, so hands easily spread infection. While your tattoo heals, make sure to wash your hands compulsively and avoid touching the tattoo unless you’re washing. If your bandage is stuck to the tattoo, worry not. Get a small spray bottle or cloth and rinse the bandage not your tattoo with water. As the bandage gets wet, it should stop sticking to your tattoo. Avoid getting any water on your tattoo for now (during the removal of the bandage), and slowly ease the bandage off. If it still stings, consider using some tattoo numbing gel.

As soon as you remove your bandage, you’ll notice that your tattoo feels kind of like a sunburn. If it hurts more than you expected, any over-the-counter pain medication will help with it. Ibuprofen seems to have the best effect. Once it’s off, you don’t have to bandage it again.

After taking off the bandage, you might be tempted to wash off all the grime. Well, good news—you can! But, you have to follow very specific instructions. Read on to learn how to wash a new tattoo.

How To Wash A New Tattoo

Before washing, make sure you have a good tattoo soap. Avoid soaps containing high amounts of petroleum or alcohol (hydrogen peroxide). Despite its status as the main ingredient in antibacterial soap, alcohol breaks down tattoo ink. That means you need specialized soaps that contain different types of antibiotics. Furthermore, petroleum runs the risk of clogging your tattoo. Instead, tattoo soaps use mineral oil (another form of petroleum), or simply pick a natural oil to use. Make sure that whatever you use also has no fragrance. To save you time, use any of the various safe tattoo aftercare soaps I list in the following recommendations section.

On top of being careful of soaps, you need to be careful of water. Essentially, keep your tattoo away from running water. A few brief minutes in the shower is fine, provided you keep your tattoo out of the water flow, but direct application seeps deep into your tattoo and risks making it waterlogged. It’s okay to let bits of shower water hit it but only use enough to get the grime off. You don’t want it soaked or warmed up, so use lukewarm or cold water while washing it. Using cool water prevents your pores from opening and leaking out too much ink. A moist towel is the best way to apply water, and definitely keep it out from underneath a faucet

Lather up your hands with soap and then wash away the grime with your hands. Don’t use loofahs or cloths for this, since they can contain high amounts of bacteria—especially if you let them air-dry in the shower every time after you wash with them. Scrubbing or rubbing the tattoo dry damages the skin and scabs, risking your tattoo’s color!

Once you finish washing, use a paper towel to pat your tattoo dry. Paper towels are better than regular towels because there’s a smaller risk of infection. Plus, if any of the colored scuds is still on your skin, it won’t stain your regular towels. If necessary, you may use clean towels to lightly dab the tattoo dry. Don’t wipe or scrub your tattoo—simply pat it. After it’s dry, there’s no need to put another bandage back on. The more air-time it gets, the faster it will heal. You can wash your tattoo up to twice a day but if it doesn’t appear to be particularly scummy, stick with once per day. That way, it retains as much ink as possible.

First Night Of Tattoo Care

How to care for a tattoo changes depending on the time. When it’s time to sleep, you want to take certain precautions. On the first night after getting your tattoo, your tattoo will ooze out clear plasma and extra ink. This is just your body’s natural way of preventing infection but it’s also a good way to ruin sheets and clothing. Wear old clothes to bed, and use old sheets, or else be prepared to have a colorful surprise when you wake up the next day.

Try to use soft, non-abrasive sheets and clothing, and avoid touching the tattoo at all. Letting it dry out is very important. If you have a large tattoo on your back, try sleeping on your side with blankets off. It might be a little uncomfortable, but in the long run your care will pay off, both by speeding up your healing process or by saving your sheets from getting a new color!

Day 2 To 14 Of Tattoo Aftercare

After two or three days, the tattoo starts to dry out. Large flakes will appear, similar to a sunburn. If you pick at these flakes, your body will not be able to absorb as much pigment as it normally would, so avoid scratching, itching, or picking while it’s like this. If you do end up scratching and chipping off some unhealed skin, your tattoo will not be as vibrant. Let the skin flake off naturally. Even if you want to itch and scratch, you have to resist. That being said, don’t wear any tight or abrasive clothing that might brush up against your tattoo and flake off some of that skin. There are various Tattoo AfterCare Kits on the market which will support your skin healing.

During the first week of tattoo aftercare, and after your tattoo starts leaking extra ink and plasma, your tattoo remains sensitive. Watch for signs of infection carefully during this stage of healing. If your tattoo still looks swollen and becomes more sensitive than its first few days, then it’s likely fending off an infection. If certain areas of ink look raised compared to the rest of your tattoo—especially common with red inks—then your body might be undergoing an allergic reaction. Both situations require a doctor’s advice on how to proceed. I talk about other side-effects and symptoms in depth later on. If it causes you slight discomfort, a little bit of numbing tattoo cream may help you out.

For everyone experiencing normal symptoms (slight tenderness with the appearance of scabs or peeling skin) then use these tips to help your body continue fighting off infection. Avoid dirty towels, clothes, and sheets—even if that ‘dirt’ is from a single-use. Never touch your tattoo with unwashed hands, since your hands contain the most bacteria out of any place on your body—except, perhaps, your mouth. So keep your lips off it, too. Keep water off your tattoo as best you can, and stay out of swimming pools, lakes, and rivers! Lastly, washing your tattoo carefully provides the best protection for a new tattoo.

Soon, your tattoo starts itching like crazy! Instead of itching your tattoo, apply light pressure onto the area with a cool cloth or use a bit of tattoo moisturizer. While your scaled skin tempts you to peel it off, that proves disastrous to your tattoo ink. Scabs and live skin alike could still be attached to the bottom layers of your skin—in other words, where your permanent ink resides. When you pull those portions up, you lose some of that permanent ink. As a result, your healed tattoo looks blotchy, patchy, or bare in some spots…at least, in the worst cases. Avoid it as much as you can!

Several ways exist to deal with the relentless itching. First, try using tattoo ointments or lotions. The aftercare kits I included above both contain moisturizers for just this purpose. I also list some stand-alone ointments that work great in a bit. Spread a few drops of moisturizer on the tattooed area and spread it around in a thin layer. When your tattoo starts to itch again, simply apply some more. By placing thin layers of moisturizer on your tattoo, you allow it to breathe and speed up healing.

On top of using a tattoo moisturizer, using a paper towel helps. Place the paper towel over your tattoo and apply light pressure with your hands. The pressure relieves itching without the scratching part.

Day 15 To 30 Of Tattoo Aftercare

Good news, your tattoo does the bulk of its healing in this stage! Like a sunburn, your skin regenerates within a few weeks and completely heals. At the beginning of this period, you still might have some redness and some flaking, but it will gradually decrease. Redness and soreness should already be gone or soon will be. Continue to moisturize it 2-3 times a day to prevent the skin from drying out. You still might see some flaking, and the drier the skin, the more flaking you’ll have. Keep it moisturized for the first 30 days until you see progress.

After waiting a bit, it still might be a bit itchy. Thankfully, you can easily fight that off with lotion. Whatever you do, don’t scratch! I know it sounds like a never-ending mantra, but that’s still an extremely important part of your aftercare routine. Never ever scratch your new tattoo. I know it’s tempting. And I know this urge… fight it! You want to know why? Well, the outer layer of your skin heals first as it’s directly exposed to the air. It’s shielding the subsequent skin layers from the outside world and all the harmful nasty stuff like bacteria out there. So, when you scratch, you feel might feel relieved…but all the armies of bacteria will cheer for you, as you just opened the gate for them to get in.

The First 3 Months

Now that we talked about how to care for a tattoo immediately after you get one, let’s talk about what to do after that. How to care for your tattoo is more than just making sure it’s properly cleaned and drying, so let’s talk about extended care. Although you can (and should) repeat the above for a month and have a nice-looking tattoo, there are many things you should avoid for three months while your skin’s deepest layers heal. Here are some things that prevent infection and promote vibrant colors in your tattoo.

• Don’t expose your tattoo to direct sunlight (even after it heals). Sunlight will fade your tattoo, since the energy of UV rays can actually break up ink particles (which is the same way your skin gets burned). You can learn more about that in my article, The Best Tattoo Sunscreen Products. When sunlight breaks down tattoo ink into smaller pieces, that allows your body to naturally process it and remove it from the whole system. Obviously, that leads to tattoo fading.
• Work out sessions, along with weight gain, stretch and pull at your skin. In the long-term, this may contort your tattoo design. I highly recommend working your body into an ‘ideal’ shape for you personally before you choose a tattoo.
• After the scabs fall off, your tattoo won’t look as vibrant as it first did. This is because there are still a few layers of healed skin that haven’t fallen off yet. Within a few months, the last few layers of skin fall off and reveal your final colors. Asking your artist for a touch up during these first few months delays the process and does nothing to help your color.
• Scratches and cuts on top of your tattoo leave scars and expose your tattoo ink to the world again. To reduce the loss of ink, use tattoo soaps to clean the area where possible. After four months or so, if you still end up with a patch of scar tissue, ask your artist about a touch-up.

After 3 Month – Long Term Tattoo Care

Once three months have passed, your tattoo should be completely healed. You can resume your normal life. You can go back to regular daily routines. Do all the sports you did. Do all the activities you like to do. Take care of the tattoo the same way you take care of the rest of your body. You want your ink to look good and stay that way? Live a healthy lifestyle. Whatever is healthy for your skin is also good for your tattoo.

Having a bad diet won’t hurt your tattoo, but it will hurt your skin. And guess what happens to everything within that skin? Yep, you’re right. Are you gaining and losing weight quickly and often? Your skin needs to adapt. Your tattoo will, too. Does a sunburn hurt? It will hurt even more when your ink fades because you didn’t protect it from the sun. Is too much alcohol bad for your skin? Yes, it is, and therefore it’s bad for your tattoo.

In very short, treat yourself well and your tattoo will shine for years. Time takes its toll on all of us. The colors of your tattoo will fade and its edges will blur. Your skin will lose its elasticity and your new ink will no longer be that perfect masterpiece it is now. By leading a healthy lifestyle, you keep your tattoo pristine and beautiful.