Let me tell you, I’ve watched thousands of people make decisions they later regretted. But here is something that most won’t tell you: that fabulous ink you are walking around with right now? Well, you see, it is living tissue. It is not static artwork hanging on the wall—it is part of your largest organ, and it is changing every single day.
You are constantly replacing your skin. Every twenty-eight days or so you are walking around in a practically new suit. And that tattoo pigment—isn’t just sitting there quietly, it is engaged in a stellar battle with your immune system, fighting against those natural processes which are intended to break it down and throw it out. This understanding changes everything about how you approach your proper aftercare routine.
Understanding Tattoo Aging: The Biology Behind Ink Longevity
How Your Immune System Affects Tattoo Pigment
Your body considers tattoo ink a victim. Smart idea, no? When that needle finds its peaceful rest in the dermis layer of skin, which is below that which you behold in the mirror—your immune system sends for reinforcements. The macrophages invade the area and start gobbling up all of the alien particles. Some of them are successful, and that is the reason why fresh tattoos will lighten slightly during the healing process. But here is the brilliant part: many of these macrophages become so dense and loaded down with ink particles that there is no further motion. They become permanent residents of the body, and thus hold the tattoo firmly in place.
They are not permanent, however; when they die, their contents are ejected from the body, and new macrophages come and reclaim the dye. Thus it continues through life. Understanding why tattoo colors change over time helps you take preventive action early.
Sun Protection: Your Tattoo’s Best Defense Against Fading
How UV Rays Destroy Tattoo Pigment
Consider now the effects of UV rays. UV rays destroy molecules of dye at the base. The shorter rays, UVA rays and sun rays, penetrate the skin sufficiently to act upon your tattoo. They liberate the dyes in such a way that the particles into which they break up can be eliminated by the body more readily. It is on this account that a summer in the country or on the beach acts more upon the tattoo than several winters spent in the house.
As you grow older the skin gets thinner naturally. After thirty, collagen is produced in the body at the rate of about one percent annually less. The elastin fibers are lost or produced at this age as well. So the media upon which rests the tattoo becomes thinner, less tight, more subject to wrinkles. A tattoo that looks sharp on tense skin of twenty-five looks very hollow on the skin of seventy.
Best Tattoo Placement for Long-Term Results
Areas to Avoid for Lasting Ink
The position of the tattoo is vital, perhaps more vital than any other consideration, in my opinion. I have seen beautiful tattoos ruined because the location was poorly selected.
Your hands and feet are not very good subjects for ink retention. The skin is thick and the skin is constantly moving, for the skin is constantly in bounds. Tattoos in these places will fade appreciably in a few years. Moreover, since these parts of the body get so much sun, it’s rather difficult to keep bright.
Fingers are even more difficult for tattoos, where the skin is tightly drawn over bone and very little fat below it. Every change in weight makes some change in the appearance of tattoos, weight increase or decrease, or swellings. The fine line designs between the knuckles? They will fade away in another ten years to mere shadows of what they once were.
There are certain places on the body that are more subject to such changes. The rib cage and the stomach are dangerous because skin stretching is caused by pregnancy or a change of weight and major changes are made in the design of a tattoo, looking like it is put on a funhouse mirror, such a beautiful circular mandala may look oval, straight lines may curve, and the proportions changed.
On the other hand, the upper arms, thighs, back and calves are particularly good places for tattoos, as the skin is thicker in these parts, is ordinarily more protected from the sun’s rays by the normal dressing, and anyhow always maintained stability during bodily changes. When properly taken care of, such a tattoo on the shoulder blade might be expected to look almost unchanged at seventy, when the same tattoo was done at thirty.
The following is a word to the wise about protecting the ink from sun rays.
To say flatly, if you are not putting on sunscreen protection regularly on your tattoos, you are running the risk of fading them beyond repair. Ultraviolet rays are a key factor in the deterioration of tattoo appearance over time.
Studies utilizing color measurement tools reveal that skin with tattoos exposed to sunlight without protection may lose approximately 30 to 40% of its color intensity in just five years. But during this time the tattoo that is protected from the sunlight does not fade very much, not over ten percent.
Let us put it in another way. Are you going to keep a valuable painting out in a bright light? Your tattoo is an investment, worth several hundred if not thousands of dollars; it is a permanent part of your body, and they deserve the care that you would give to any valuable work of art.
The thing to do is to use a broad-spectrum sunscreen with a protective value of SPF of 30 or higher. This must be put on every two hours when out in the sunlight. “Broad spectrum” means protection from both the UVA as well as the UVB rays. The UV rays penetrate into the skin and really do cause long-term damage. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, proper sun protection is essential for maintaining tattoo vibrancy. This is one of the points many people forget, or else they put it on once in the morning and think that is sufficient for good protection.
As a protection, clothing offers even greater protection than does sunscreen for many. This is one of the reasons that it is absolutely necessary for one who spends any great deal of time in the outdoors.
Hydration and Skin Care for Tattoo Preservation
Keeping your skin properly moisturized is essential for tattoo longevity. Hydration helps maintain skin elasticity and keeps the ink looking fresh. Using quality products like Vitium Tattoo Butter can help keep your skin nourished and your tattoo colors vibrant.
When to Consider Tattoo Touch-Ups
Having a touch-up done on your tattoo is not a sign of failure but an intelligent maintenance decision. Over years of exposure to the elements, some fading is natural and expected.
The artists in general who did the work in the first place are only too glad to do the touch-ups, and will often do them for a lesser sum. They wish their portfolio pieces to look their best. If your original artist is not available to do the work—find someone who is expert in the kind of work you now have. Do not have someone mess the tattoo who is not known to be competent in that kind of work.
Some people set their face against the idea of having to have a touch-up done on their work because they think when one does so it meant that the tattoo was a “failure.” That is ego instead of logic speaking. Your tattoo in this case is just doing the work it is meant to do and logically is doing. The touch-up is again an intelligence, not a sign of shame.
Lifestyle Factors That Impact Tattoo Aging
Diet, Smoking, and Exercise Effects on Ink
Smoking puts on accelerated age on skin to an awful difference. Blood supply to the skin is inhibited, causing delivery of oxygen and other materials to skin to undergo change. It breaks down collagen and elastin at a more rapid rate. Hence tattoos on smokers’ wrinkled and aged skin also go airy at a slower and a greater rate than on skin that does not wrinkle and age speedily. Not that one is being critical, it is just physiology.
Your diet is going to directly affect the quality of your skin. Sugar is terrible for skin because of glycation (the sugar molecules adhere to collagen and elastin) making them inflexible and fragile. But the foods that are high in antioxidants like berries, the green leafy vegetables and nuts will minimize the oxidant damage that eats away the cells of the skin and pigment of your tattooing.
Too much alcohol is dehydrating systemically and does cause inflammation, both of which are bad in their effect on skin health and appearance. Heavy long-term inebriation can be reflected in your skin and also show up in your tattooing radiating outward.
Exercise improves the circulation and nourishment to the skin. But rapid growth of muscle will stretch the skin and may cause distortion to tattoo work in that area. Gradual growth is better than big cycles of bulking up in this area.
The Reality of Gravity and Skin Aging
Here is something no one wants to tackle, but must: Gravity wins every time. Skin sags. There is no getting around it. A tattoo on the upper arm may have changed location some two inches south in fifty years. One in the belly area may have enlarged and sagged as the distribution of fat with aging changed.
Totally negate this? Probably not, but nonetheless it can be slowed. For one, strength training will help maintain the muscular underpinning of the skin. Relatively stable weight helps keep you from the rapid degrees of expanding and contracting which causes more skin stretch. Good nutrition will help furnish some of the structural proteins which will be able to keep skin more firm.
Choosing Designs That Age Well
Some designs are better aging than others. Large tattoos featuring heavy lines and strong contrast last longer than fine detail or delicately executed lines. Japanese traditional, American Traditional and bold designs are often impressive even on the older skin, because their large clear elements remain understandable even when the finer details are somewhat blurred with age.
On the other hand, small delicate portraits or watercolor or fine-line designs are often beautiful at the start, and afterwards become somewhat obliterated or totally illegible, as they slowly fade and are in some instances somewhat blended. The wiser sort of person will pick designs which will have legibility in the future.
Your tattoo is a conversation between you and your happy thought future self.
In looking over the examples of man’s efforts on his tattoo years from now, you will mentally refresh ideas of what you were then. They will certainly be suggestive of what those representations meant to you, the sensations that stirred within you and what life was to you then.
While it is important that the outward seems correct, the care of a tattoo means more than that. It means to care for the story you have tattooed upon the skin. It means learning to keep intact that decision you made long years ago in behalf of some former self.
Give yourself suitable and practical nurture. Protect the tattoo from the rays of the sun, keep the skin in condition to afford a healthy growth and obtain sufficient moisture, lead a life of a proper character to any tattooed man, and employ designs and placements on your own anatomy that enhance it without the possibility of taking away from it.
As the body and the tattoos gradually grow older together, you must guard against the impossibility of change, for it must come. Instead of attempting to stop it, determine to have it so conditioned when eighty years of age comes to you, that looking back on the etchings done, you will feel thankful you had given them the attention that had kept them all right.
