Hand tattoo aftercare

Why hands are different

Four things stack up against you, and none of them are about how well you moisturise.

The skin turns over faster

Hand skin regenerates more quickly than skin on your arm or your back. Faster turnover means more of the ink deposited in the upper layers gets carried out with the cells that hold it. This is the main reason hands fade, and there is nothing you can do about it. It is anatomy.

You wash them constantly

You are supposed to keep a fresh tattoo clean, and you are not supposed to soak it or scrub it. On a hand, those two instructions are in direct conflict every time you use the toilet, cook a meal, or touch anything. Twenty hand-washes a day is normal life and it is a lot of water and soap over a healing tattoo.

Constant friction and flexing

Your hands touch everything. Pockets, steering wheels, keyboards, bags, door handles. And the skin stretches and folds through a huge range of motion thousands of times a day. Fingers and knuckles are the worst areas on the body for both.

Palms and side-of-finger work barely holds at all

Palm skin is a different beast entirely and it sheds ink aggressively. Many artists will not tattoo palms, and the ones who do will tell you it is going to fall out. The same goes for the inside surfaces of fingers. If an artist tells you a placement will not hold, believe them.

What to actually do

The routine is the standard one. The difficulty is doing it while living your life.

• Wash gently and often, and pat dry. You cannot avoid washing your hands, so do it properly. Lukewarm water, unscented soap, no scrubbing, and pat dry with a clean towel or paper towel rather than rubbing.
• Moisturise after every wash, thinly. This is the compromise. Hands get washed constantly, so they dry out constantly, so they need topping up more often than any other placement. Thin layers. Keep something in your pocket.
• Wear gloves for anything wet or dirty. Washing up, cleaning, gardening, work. Not latex against the fresh tattoo for hours, but for the twenty minutes you are elbow deep in a sink, gloves are the right call.
• Skip the gym, or train legs. Every bar, dumbbell and handle runs across your hands. There is no way to grip anything without abrading the tattoo. Of every placement on the body, this is the one where taking two weeks off lifting is genuinely the correct answer.
• Watch out for your job. If you work with your hands, in a kitchen, on tools, in a workshop, be honest with yourself about whether you can heal this properly, and time the tattoo around it if you can.

The touch-up conversation

Assume you will need one. Most reputable artists factor a hand touch-up into the price or offer one at cost, precisely because everyone knows how this goes. If your artist has not raised it, raise it yourself before you book.

Wait until it is fully healed, which means at least a month and often longer, before you judge the result. Hands look worse at the four week mark than they will at eight. Do not go back in for a touch-up on a tattoo that is still settling.

Design choices that survive

This is aftercare advice that happens before the needle, and it matters more than anything you put on afterwards.

Bold, solid, well-spaced work holds up on hands. Fine line, delicate script, tight detail and heavy shading do not. An artist who is good at hands will steer you toward the former, and it is worth listening even if the pretty fine line design is the one you walked in with.

Disclosure: Tattoo Standard is published by Penguin Tattoo Co, an Australian brand that makes tattoo aftercare products. We have not named or linked any product in this article, our own included.