The Most Important 24 Hours Of Your Tattoos Life

So today is the day, exciting isn’t it?! You’ve been dreaming of this day for a while now, you’ve emailed back and forth with your favourite artist, picked out a design all your friends will be jealous of, pencilled the date into your unicorn themed calendar and put a big circle around it. Today is the day you get your tattoo. Assuming that you have picked a good artist who works in a clean studio then you should have some beautiful art on your skin. Now comes the most important 24 hours of its life.

The healing process is the most important phase of your tattoos life, especially the first 24 hours. This is because, as a fresh wound your tattoo is the most susceptible to infection. This can cause loss of unsettled ink and patchy healing! Please save yourself the pain and do this correctly!

Our Recommended Method

A simple step-by-step process will give you perfect healing every time. Here’s what we recommend:

1. Once you have got home from your appointment, leave about 2-3 hours before taking off your wrap (unless you have a Saniderm or second skin applied, leave this on for as long as your artist recommends).
2. Once you have taken off your wrap, rinse your tattoo clean with Luke-warm water. This is to remove blood, ink, and other ointments that may be sitting on your tattoo. It is important not to completely saturate your tattoo and we do NOT recommend using any type of soap on the 1st day.
   
3. Now, allow your tattoo to air dry; it's an open wound and needs to breathe.
4. Once your tattoo has been allowed to breathe for a while (anything from 10 - 20 minutes), you can apply your Aftercare Cream in a thin layer on top of your tattoo and allow it to sink in completely.

NOTE: If the tattoo is still leaking lots of plasma, you may rewrap your tattoo before bed to protect your sheets. But after the first night, you should not rewrap again.

Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 daily. You can start showering as usual on the 2nd or 3rd day, but we recommend using a soap specially made for fresh tattoos or gentle fragrance-free soap for the tattooed area. This will help to remove impurities while not irritating the skin.

From then on, all you have to do is keep your tattoo clean, let it breathe, and keep it hydrated using your Aftercare Cream 2-3 times a day, depending on how dry your skin gets.

Happy healing!