What you should know about tattoos before you go to a tattoo parlor


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Don't worry, no one is going to intimidate you or talk you out of doing a watercolor tattoo on your entire back. Tattoos are great, but they stay with us forever, so it makes sense to fortify your knowledge on the subject before crossing the threshold of the salon. After all, there's no guarantee that the trendy tattoos that everyone else has now will work for you.

Causes of fading tattoos

Physiological features of the skin

When a tattoo is applied, the pigment is injected into the dermis, the layer of skin beneath the epidermis. The dermis includes nerve endings, collagen fibers, and blood vessels. The body reacts to the injections as a microinflammation. It tries to eliminate them with the help of immune system cells, which crush the pigment into particles and remove them through the lymphatic system. Therefore, only part of the dye remains in the dermis. The more "delicately" the master has worked on the skin, the faster the pigment is removed from the skin. The process of physiological fragmentation of the dye and its elimination lasts for the whole period of the tattoo, but is most active in the first six months after the session.

Immediately after the tattoo looks very bright as the traumatized upper skin layer is partially exfoliated. After the epidermis fully regenerates, the brightness of the pigments decreases and you get the feeling that the tattoo is a little faded. The thicker the layer of epidermis, the paler the pattern becomes.

The perception of tattoo colors depends largely on the pigmentation of the skin. In white-skinned people there is practically no color distortion, but in swarthy people the black pigment of the tattoo may initially have a bluish tint. Colored tattoos on swarthy skin catastrophically lose brightness already after epidermis recovery, and orange, beige, yellow can disappear at all. The combination of blue with yellowish skin tones leads to unsightly greenish tones.

The perception of color depends on the type of lighting - in artificial light all tattoos look darker than in daylight.

Colors and quality of pigments used

Fade rate of tattoo depends on the quality of pigments used. Highly concentrated paints from proven manufacturers hold up best. The intensity of fading is determined by the color of the pigment. Tattoos with shades of yellow and orange fade faster. Longer are the body drawings, which are dominated by blue, brown, black and red colors.

Place of tattooing

Tattoos affixed to the places of constant friction against clothes and shoes, as well as those open to exposure to sunlight, quickly fade. Problem areas - fingers and toes, wrist, neck, ankle, feet.

Lifestyle of the tattoo owner

The strongest impact on the brightness of a tattoo is caused by sunlight, which destroys the pigment even in the deep layers of the skin. One of the unpleasant consequences of exposure to UV radiation is the appearance of a blue tint in black tattoos.

After applying the image is recommended to carefully protect it from direct sunlight during the first three months, as well as be sure to follow other rules of care for the tattoo. After full recovery, the epidermis partially protects the dermis from ultraviolet radiation and the process of burnout of the figure slows down.

How to keep the color of the tattoo after time?

What should I do to keep a tattoo from fading? All you have to do is keep your skin healthy. Using olive or sea buckthorn oil and sunscreen for care. Many owners of nudes, annually near the beginning of winter. After the sun comes off visit the salon to adjust the beginning of the pale areas of the tattoo.

Do not think that all the problems of the faded image can be solved with the help of correction. The renewal of the tattoo that has faded over time, will bring the expected effect, if in advance to take care of its quality. Choose the right place for the application, the master and the pigments that will be injected under the skin.

Choice of master

Tattoo may look good in 10 years both in the picture and in real life. If the work was performed qualitatively. Insufficient penetration into the skin of the needle. Improperly selected paint. The use of a needle of wrong diameter can cause irreparable damage to the image already in the first months after its padding, and with time the tattoo fades. Before agreeing on the date of the tattoo, you need to talk to the master, ask about his work from visitors to the salon or acquaintances.

Over time tattoos
Tattoo after 5 years.

In the arsenal of a good tattooist usually several devices of well-known brands. For perfect padding of contours induction machine is used, quality stewing is carried out by a rotor. Separate tattoo machines are needed for working through different thickness of the contours, large and small drawings.

Paints and style

With the help of modern synthetic pigments with a safe composition for health. On the basis of high-quality hypoallergenic solvents you can get a fade-resistant drawing, if you observe the following rules:

  • To tattoo after a long time remained bright, you should not abuse the color purple. Which is manganese-based and has the lowest resistance to fading of the main 8 pigments. All shades of pink, blue, yellow, white and orange also fade quickly. Brown, red, blue and black are the most resistant colors. A white tattoo may even turn yellow over time.
  • To ensure protection from fading and durability. It is better to use surgical plastic and mineral filler as pigments.
  • Do not skimp on the quality of components by buying products from unknown manufacturers. Solvent for tattooing, which will not float over time, should be one of the best.

It used to be thought that red tattoos fade a lot over time. Today, however, red dyes have been perfected, and they hold up beautifully to the skin.

Drawings in the Ethnic technique or in the style of Dotwork are characterized by an abundance of small details. Tattoos are the most prone to "age" changes. The most unstable are images in the style of Watercolor. But inherent to this technique is a delicate translucency of colors. Combined with the choice of "air" subject, even with fading continues to seem just realized idea of the master.

A similar effect is sometimes obtained on drawings made in the style or Realism. Due to the large number of halftones, the lack of clearly defined boundaries of the elements and small details that could blur.

The right place

A tattoo, even after 10 years, will retain its original appearance when applied to an area of skin most of the year or permanently concealed by clothing. The smooth surface of the back, for example, is not only UV-protected, but also practically not subject to deformation. You should not put a tattoo on fingers and hands of a person who by the nature of his work is forced to often during the day in contact with water or corrosive environments. Tattoo on fingers and hands after a while will float and fade badly.

Tattoo on a foot because of constant contact with shoes, of course, will lose the look faster than the one performed on the scapula. Poor hold pigment in the rough skin of the knees. Therefore, it is better to choose drawings for this area with large details. The thighs easily increase in size, stretching the skin, even with a slight weight gain. The smaller the drawing, the less noticeable the deformation will be.

Tattoo on the hip
Tattoo on the thigh

Recommended reading: Mortal Kombat tattoo

How to properly glue tattoo stickers - instructions

As we have already said, properly glue tattoo stickers on the body you can do yourself, the main thing is to stock up in advance with everything you need.


What you will need:

  • A transferable tattoo picture;
  • with soft cosmetic tissues or cotton pads;
  • warm water;
  • body scrub;
  • alcohol lotion.

Sequence of action:

  1. First, you need to thoroughly clean the skin in the place where the sticker will be located. To do this, treat this area of the skin with a body scrub, which will remove the keratinized skin particles, which will make the adhesion of the picture to the surface of the skin much better. Rinse off the scrub, dry the skin and apply an alcohol-based lotion to the skin to further degrease the surface. No creams should be used;
  2. The next step is to remove excess hair. This step is, of course, at will and if possible. But keep in mind that the temporary tattoo will unlikely look attractive, for example on the arm or leg with extra vegetation.
  3. Delicately remove the transparent protective film from the sticker. Try not to damage the picture itself, which will remain on the paper base, because it is very thin and fragile;
  4. Apply the image to the skin, face down. Now it is still possible to change the location of the sticker or the place of application. Position the sticker so that it looks as beautiful as possible. Once you glue the picture, you can't re-glue or move it;
  5. Take a cotton pad or tissue, soak it in warm water and apply it to the paper base of the tattoo. The tissue should be well soaked, not slightly damp. Press the tissue firmly against the sticker. Hold it like this for about half a minute. Try not to move or move either the tissue or the sticker. Make sure that the paper backing of the picture is evenly soaked;
  6. Delicately separate the paper backing from the translated tattoo. The bigger the size of your sticker, the more carefully you need to proceed so as not to damage the tattoo. At this stage the tattoo is still wet and can be lightly corrected, for example, to straighten the folds, if there are any. When you are sure the sticker is positioned just the way you like it, gently dab the sticker with a soft cloth to remove any excess moisture.

Why don't tattoos go away?

In an article about whether dust is particles of human skin, we learned that every hour a person sheds about 1,000 dead skin cells. Based on this fact, it would be logical to assume that over time, the skin particles dyed during tattooing should be shed and cause the pattern to disappear. For a long time scientists could not understand the reason of durability of tattoos until French researchers carried out an experiment involving several mice. The results of the scientific work were published in the scientific journal Journal of Experimental Medicine.

All tattoos fade over time, but they can be renewed regularly

They put tattoos on the tails of several lab mice and monitored their bodies' reactions. The aforementioned immune cells macrophages, as they are supposed to, pounced on the dye. In further examination of the processes, it was found that after the cells die, the dye is retracted by neighboring cells and this happens almost all the time. To be sure of this, the scientists conducted another experiment in which they transplanted a tattooed section of skin from one mouse into another. Six weeks later, the stained cells were absorbed by the cells of the new host.

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This discovery is interesting not only because it has solved another mystery around tattoos. Perhaps, thanks to new knowledge, scientists will be able to develop a new method of removing tattoos, after which there is no trace. At the moment, however, tattoos are removed under the influence of a laser. The rays destroy the skin cells and make them release dye. But the result is rarely perfect, because the outline of the tattoo is still visible.

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