Before your tattoo appointment
There are a few thing to do and to avoid during the few days before you get tattooed. It’s important to be aware of them in order for it to heal properly and have it look its best. Let’s go over them!
Do:
Keep yourself hydrated!
Drink your water! Water intake is an important factor concerning skin heath and hydration. Tattooing dry skin is excessively harder, longer, and can create unnecessary trauma to the skin, impacting the healing process afterwards.
Eat!
Eat a heathy breakfast/lunch before your tattoo. The body can react in unexpected ways to being tattooed, as it is creating a wound on one of the most important organs; the skin. It’s best to have something in your stomach. Also bring a snack and something to drink!
Make sure you don’t have a health condition preventing you from getting a tattoo
Health conditions such as diabetes, psoriasis, autoimmune disorders, cancer, hepatitis, pregnancy, breastfeeding, etc. can put you at risk of infections, slow down the healing process, or jeopardize your overall health if you were to get tattooed.
It’s important to know how your body could react to getting a tattoo, so definitely discuss with your healthcare professional to know their recommendation and understand the risks involved in order to make an informed decision.
Don’t:
Moisturize excessively
Moisturize, but avoid excessively moisturizing the area or applying lotion right before your tattoo. We want the skin hydrated, but not to a degree where it’ll regenerate too quickly. This can result in a fading tattoo, as the skin will have trouble absorbing the ink.
Drink alcohol
If you drink excessively the night before, your immune system will be busy recovering from this hangover, and therefore will have less energy to put into healing your tattoo. Alcohol also dehydrates you, making the skin more tight and dry - so more difficult to tattoo - and creating unnecessary trauma to it.
If you drink before or during your session, you will bleed excessively, as alcohol is a blood thinner. Your tattoo will also keep bleeding a bit after, and will most likely scab later on, thus putting it at a greater risk of infection and this could potentially impact the look of your healed tattoo.
Shave the area
It is necessary to shave the area right before tattooing it, as body hair can have dead skin and bacteria around it that soap and skin disinfectant won’t be able to thoroughly get rid of. Otherwise, when the needle is being pushed through the skin, there is always a risk of a hair being caught in it and the bacteria could enter the body, leading to infections.
I ask that clients do not shave the area for the few days leading up to your tattoo appointment. Since I will shave the hair right before applying the stencil, I wouldn’t want to cause razor burns if the hair is too short, as this would irritate the skin unnecessarily and could also impact the healing process.
