Solid black armband tattoos are commonly worn to represent mourning. When a person loses a loved one, they will get a solid black armband to represent that loss and to show that they want to keep the person close to them. Some people will have multiple black armbands when two or more people they have loved pass away.

One of the most popular armbands is the barbed wire tattoo, which has multiple meanings. Traditionally, Russians and Japanese convicts would get the barbed wire tattoo to show that they have been behind bars. In other cultures, they have been seen as one of the cooler armband designs so they hold a bit less meaning.

Hawaiians have been using the armband tattoo to represent pride for a long time. There are many Hawaiian armband designs, including water designs and themed designs to represent the exact places where they come from. Most of these armband tattoos are much larger and will cover up to or more than a third of the arm.

The armband tattoo is one of the trendiest around, so that alone could be seen as a meaning. For example, a famous celebrity might get a nice-looking armband tattoo and hundreds of people will follow suit. When this happens, the people who got that same armband tattoo might feel at one with that celebrity or they might feel like the tattoo itself will give them an extra boost in life.

Armband tattoos come in a variety of readily-available designs, so they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. We don’t recommend just picking one out of a tattoo book, though, unless you are absolutely sure that a plain armband is exactly what you want and what you’ll always like having on your skin. The key is to choose one of those readily-made designs and come up with a way to change it in some way (drastically or subtly) so you have something that is both unique and meaningful to you.