Vanliga frågor

Remove the tattoo completely or get a cover-up?

When you start thinking about removing a tattoo that "no longer feels like you" and begin researching the topic, you’ll often find yourself at a crossroads with two options – completely remove the tattoo or get a cover-up.

What suits you best depends on several factors, including how your old tattoo looks, its placement, and what you'd prefer it to look like instead. Before making a decision, it’s important to understand the difference between tattoo removal and cover-up tattoos.

Tattoo removal with laser

Laser tattoo removal involves using laser technology to break down the ink pigments in the tattoo, allowing your immune system to "clean up" the pigments. The reason your immune system doesn’t remove the tattoo on its own before laser treatment is because the pigments are too large for the immune system’s cleaning cells, called macrophages, to handle. Over time and with a number of treatments, the ink particles are broken down to a size that macrophages can fully digest and transport out of the body.

Laser treatments must be repeated at 12-week intervals and typically take between 8-12 sessions, depending on the tattoo’s age, size, ink type, color, and location.

For most people, the skin will look as it did before the tattoo was there.

Laser removal is best for those who do not want the old tattoo to remain or be part of a new design. For example, if the tattoo includes the name of an ex-partner or symbolizes a particular period of your life, it might bring back memories that you no longer want to be reminded of. In such cases, a cover-up might still evoke these memories, so complete removal could be the best option.

It's worth mentioning that, in partnership with War on Cancer, we offer free treatments for tattoos made for radiation therapy. Learn more about our collaboration with War on Cancer here.

Cover-up tattoo

A cover-up tattoo always starts from the old design to create a new one. Parts of the old tattoo are covered or filled in to fit the new design. Fewer laser treatments are required as the tattoo doesn’t need to completely disappear before a new one can be applied over it.

This option works well for people who want to keep their tattoos but desire a new design that conceals the old one. For example, perhaps you got a homemade tattoo at a friend’s afterparty, and now, a few years later, you’d prefer a more professional design.

By combining laser removal with a cover-up, a tattoo artist can have a better starting point to create a new and improved tattoo over your old one. You can read more about why laser treatments are still needed before getting a cover-up tattoo here.