A mild infection on your new tattoo can ruin your whole tattoo and tattooed skin area. An infected tattoo can look like a red cracked tattoo or a red inflamed rash. Maybe you can feel its pain. If you sense tattoo infection signs, treat your infected tattoo immediately if you know how to treat an infected tattoo.
In case, you don’t know “how to treat an infected tattoo?”, we have shared simple steps to remove the tattoo infection at home in this article. Our team worked hard to give this to the point yet important information. Also, we have shared tattoo infection signs and how you can prevent tattoo infections in the future.
Tattoo Infection – How Many People Get Tattoo Infection And Why?
Having tattoos on our bodies is very common nowadays. We found that more than half 50% of people in European countries have tattoos. Almost every workplace and job allowed showing tattoos. In simple words, it was not allowed to show your tattoo in some countries and workplaces a few years ago.
Therefore, you may think tattoos are completely safe when seeing everybody with a tattoo. Yes, having tattoos are safe. Also, you can get tattoos without feeling any pain with the use of the best tattoo numbing creams. But in minor cases, people destroy their tattooed skin when they don’t take care of their tattoos during the tattoo healing process.
Remember, your tattoo needs time to heal properly. It can take 4 to 6 six weeks, depending on the size and complexity of the tattoo design. If you follow the instruction of your tattoo artist, the tattoo will heal soon without any tattoo cracking or tattoo infection.
Tattoo Infection Signs
When your tattoo gets infected, you will know it with the help of these tattoo infection signs:
- The tattooed skin area starts irritating.
- Red rashes and swelling on the tattoo.
- Pus coming out of the tattooed skin area.
- Red streaking from the tattooed skin area.
- Fever.
- Irregular shivering.
- Tides of heat and cold.
How To Treat An Infected Tattoo At Home?
Treat your mild tattoo infection before it gets more harmful. If you consulted with your tattoo and received instructions with some medicines. Then, do what your doctor told you to remove the tattoo infection.
On the other hand, you want to treat your mild tattoo infection without a doctor at home. We have found a few steps, which are given below:
- Wash your tattoo with the best tattoo soap and clean it with a paper towel. Repeat this step two times a day. Never use something other than warm water to wash the tattoo. Some immature people use alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, which is not good. Because both these liquids can slow the tattoo healing process.
- Use petroleum jelly on the tattoo and wrap it with second skin or saniderm bandage.
- Take anti-inflammatory and pain-killing pills to remove bulges and discomfort. For example, Naproxen and Advil.
- Wrap the ice with a thin cloth and put it on the infected tattoo for 10 to 15 minutes. Take a break of 5 minutes and do this process 3 times a day to remove inflammation.
- You can use aloe vera directly on the infected tattoo as it boosts the skin healing procedure. But don’t rub aloe vera on the tattoo.
- We know wrapping the new tattoo keeps dust and bacteria away from the tattoo. But whenever you remove a tattoo bandage for any purpose, like washing the tattoo or applying any ointment, let your tattooed skin breathe for some time.
- Wear only loose clothes for some time until the tattoo heals completely. Also, keep your tattoo safe from direct sunlight.
Minor tattoo infection is easy to treat at home. Gentle cleaning and a few antibacterial ointment or medicines are enough to remove an infection from your new tattoo.
However, treatment of some tattoo infections takes time and requires a doctor’s help if the tattoo infection is caused by specific bacteria. There are multiple types of bacteria that can cause multiple types of a tattoo infections. Also, some tattoo infections do not get removed with antibiotics as they become immune.
So, if you are unable to reduce tattoo infection at home, don’t hesitate to go to a doctor. We advise you to follow tattoo aftercare instructions given by your tattooist to avoid getting a tattoo infection.
How To Prevent Tattoo Infection?
When you booked your tattoo session from a tattoo shop, make sure you take care of the following important things:
- The tattoo artist is a registered professional tattoo artist and has a license for running a tattoo shop.
- Your tattoo artist use sterilized equipment for tattooing.
- You are not allergic to any ingredient of tattoo ink your tattoo artist is going to use for your tattoo.
- Wrap your new tattoo with second skin or saniderm bandage to keep your tattoo safe from exposure to bacteria and getting infected.
- Note down tattoo aftercare instructions from your tattoo artist and follow them properly.
- Use only tattoo soap for washing your skin area and clean it with a paper towel.
- Do not scratch or rub on dry skin.
- Use Vaseline or ointment instead of any regular lotion on the new tattoo to keep it hydrated.
Our team has tried to explain everything in simple words to help you more. We hope now you know how to treat an infected tattoo without a doctor at home. If you found this article helpful, share it with others to help them.
You can ask us further questions if you have any. We are always here to answer your queries. For more informational articles on tattoos, go to the blog section and check new posts. Moreover, our tattoo artist team has shared biased reviews on multiple tattoo products. Don’t forget to get benefits from them.
Stay Blessed!