If there’s one thing stopping you from getting a tattoo (alongside money), it must be the pain issue. Tattoos are notoriously known for being rather painful. The pain is, however, not the same for every tattoo. How much your tattoo is going to hurt heavily depends on the location of the tattoo, the style of the tattoo, which determines the type of needle used, or even the color of the tattoo.

For example, tattoos done using white color hurt significantly more since the white parts need to be done two or three times. This means that the tattoo artists will go over the same spot twice or thrice to get the pigment to work. As a result, you’d experience an extra amount of pain.

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Now, all of this sounds scary, especially if it’s your first time getting tattooed. But, have you ever stopped to think why so many people have tattoos, despite the pain. Well, when done by a professional tattoo artist, tattoo pain can be mitigated, and the overall experience can be pretty pleasant. But, a certain amount of pain, or at least discomfort simply needs to be present; after all, your skin is being stabbed and poked by tiny needles over 3000 times in a minute.

However, there are some ways, tips, and tricks you can utilize to minimize the overall pain, make it truly bearable and ensure your trip to the tattoo studio is as pain-free as possible. We’ll talk about all of this in the following paragraphs, so make sure to keep on reading!

Tattoos and Pain

Why Do Tattoos Hurt (So Much)?

Before we get into the tips for a ‘painless’ tattoo, we need to talk about why do they hurt in the first place. Well, the science behind tattooing shows why we experience so much pain when we get tattooed.

First of all; the needles and the dye vs. the skin – we need to discuss these to understand the very source of the tattoo pain. At speed of 80 to 150 times a second, a needle pokes into your skin to inject the dye. The needle, upon entering the skin, creates a vacuum area that holds the dye in place.