How great! But it’s not over yet. Your fresh tattoo is to be considered a wound and has to be treated with great caution and care.
The following instructions are an explanation of how we treat our fresh tattoos. This doesn’t mean that any other way is wrong and only ours is right. Nevertheless, the core of all after care instructions is the same: Keep your tattoo clean and protect it from harm.

Consider your fresh tattoo a wound. Your skin has been hurt, perforated with a lot of little stitches of a needle. The amount of bruise can be compared to a medium intense burn. This means for you: You want to do your best possible within the upcoming days to protect this wound against further damage and especially prevent bacteria or other microorganisms from entering your body.
Before you leave the studio, the tattooist will wrap the tattoo with a piece of cling film. This cling film is meant to protect your tattoo on the way home from getting in touch with material that is not clean, such as trousers or shirts you’ve worn all day long or dust from the street. It shouldn’t stay on you for too long as your skin can’t breathe and wound liquids will start to gather under the foil.

Once you’re home, take off the foil and take a shower – not too hot and not too long. Don’t wash the fresh tattoo with any shower gels or other chemical products that contain perfumes and other harmful ingredients. Take your first shower washing your tattoo throughly with soap. If needed, use a clean paper towel to dry pad the tattoo, don’t rub it. Give your skin some time to breathe, allow the tattoo to dry in the open.

It’s time to put some cream on your hurt skin. We recommend you a cream that consists only of natural materials – no mineral oils or parabenes added. You can purchase cream directly in our studio. If you prefer to buy a cream from the pharmacy or from another source, ask your tattooist for advice on which product to purchase and how to use it. Healing creams from pharmacies tend to contain chemically produced medicaments in them and shouldn’t be used for a longer period of time, while the cream containing solely natural ingredients can be used continuously.

When putting cream on your fresh tattoo, the aim is to cover everything in a thin layer in order to keep the tattoo soft and prevent it from drying out too much. The cream acts also like a protective layer against microorganisms and dirt. Don’t put a thick layer of cream on your skin – it might soak the fresh tattoo too much and wash out some pigment. But also don’t allow your tattoo to get too dry for a longer while, as dry skin tends to peel off too fast and will rip out some pigment in this peeling process. The result in both cases: Most likely your tattoo will have holes or lighter spots and you’ll be unhappy and will have to get some parts redone – which again causes a wound and a healing process to follow.

Within the following days you should try to keep your tattoo moisturized, to keep it soft and safe. You can put cream on it about 2 – 3 times a day. Also you should wash the tattoo 1 or more times a day without soaking it. So don’t take a long, hot bath, just take a quick shower, the water being not too hot and not too hard on the skin. Please don’t use any washing lotions or cleansing gels, but a normal piece of soap without perfumes and a low ph-rate. Within these first days it’s not recommended to do sport, stretch the skin more than normal or sweat extensively. It would be good to wear wider clothes, so you don’t risk any piece of textile to constantly rub your skin. You shouldn’t expose your new tattoo to the sun. No solarium for you, no swimming pool, no sauna.

Once the first week has passed, you will realize that the places of your skin where pigment has been injected is getting dry and starting to peel off. This is completely normal even if it doesn’t look very nice to have some dandruff-like pieces of skin on your sheets and in your clothes. Also this process might cause a very annoying itching. However – don’t scratch. We know you really want to, but by scratching you risk to damage this sensitive skin once more or rip out some pigment which might cause your tattoo to have holes afterwards. Swimming pools, saunas, solariums and the sun are still taboo for you, but you’re welcome to take on your physical work out again.