After you get a tattoo, a few days later, it starts peeling. Why does it happen, and what should you do? Let’s go back to some fundamentals:
Our skin is layered and grows from the inside. Skin cells are generated on the inner levels, they’re quite watery and full of fluids, and slowly they move up and dry out. The top layer of our skin is basically dead skin cells. It’s like a dead brick wall that protects us from bacteria, which would love to get in and kill us if they could.
During the tattoo process, ink is placed in the second layer of the skin. This is really important because if you go too deep, into that watery and fluid layer, the ink spreads too much and creates weird black spots called blowouts. Inexperienced artists might cause blowouts, and they’re really hard—basically impossible—to fix. On the other hand, if you don’t go deep enough and only deposit ink in the first (dead) layer of the skin, it won’t stay. It’ll just fall off once healing is done, and then you usually need to come back for a touch-up.
While tattooing, the machine’s needle penetrates the skin around 100 times a second, which adds up to huge numbers by the end of a session. Your skin is very traumatized, and the top layer gets destroyed. During healing, the skin fixes itself: it sheds that damaged top layer of dead cells and creates a fresh layer of skin over the ink. This is also why tattoos “fade.” Technically, you’re seeing the ink through a new layer of skin, and this layer has pigmentation that changes how the tattoo looks. The darker your skin, the more pigmentation you have, which is why you can’t just put white ink on a Black person and expect it to look bright—it’ll be under their layer of skin and barely visible.
Peeling typically starts around day two or three. It’s natural, so don’t help it along. Parts of the peeling skin might still be connected to deeper layers, and if you pull it, you could pull out some ink and create more trauma. That might mean you’ll need another touch-up.
Honestly, nothing. It’ll take a few days to a week to finish peeling. Also, when you bathe or shower, your skin soaks up water, including the peeling parts. When you dry off with a towel, you might feel tempted to just pull it off—avoid that and don’t help your skin peel. Your body knows what it’s doing.
