Tattoo Removals & Cover-ups

For thousands of years the permanence of a tattoo was one of the main attributes of the art.  However, as long as there’s been tattooing there’s also been tattoo regret.  Whether it was bad decision making on the part of the patron or poor quality work from the artist or both, the want to remove or cover a tattoo has most likely been around since the day after tattooing was invented.  Unfortunately, up until the last few decades a person’s options were quite limited.  Basically, one had the choice of covering it up with a larger, and usually darker, tattoo, hiding it with clothes or make-up, or trying some type of unregulated removal concoction that was probably made in someone’s bathtub.  Luckily, times have changed. 

By the turn of the last century, improvements in regulations and advancements in technologies paved the way for safer and better alternatives for both cover-up and removal options. These include such things as better tattooing pigments (which allows for brighter colors to be used for cover-ups in many cases), self-applying topical removal ointments (which will usually only dull down the tattoo, but rarely completely erases it), laser removal (which works the best, but be prepared to spend hundreds of dollars per sq. inch with multiple sessions typically required and expect to have it hurt much worse than the tattoo itself did), and finally, having a removal solution tattooed into the unwanted piece so the pigment breaks up and disperses itself  out of the skin in the form of a scab (which is Pikes Peak Tattoo’s method of removal, but can only be done up to a sq. inch per session and still may require multiple sessions for complete removal).  So if you are unsatisfied with a tattoo that you have or need one removed for whatever the reason, Pikes Peak Tattoo encourages you to come in and consult with all of our knowledgeable artists about the options available to you.

Example of a well done cover-up:

Before	After