How Tattoos Work

One might ask themselves how in the world does a tattoo stay on your skin forever? I mean, I’m pretty sure that most people are aware that we as human shed are skin all the time. So one might wonder how does the ink from our tattoos never fall off as well. Well in this post I will explain the whole process of how and why tattoos stay on our skin forever.

First you should know that a tattoo needle punctures you skin up to 50 to 3,00 times a minute when getting a tattoo. The tattoo needle punctures the cells of the dermis which is the second layer of the skin. Our skin consists of three layers: the epidermis, dermis and subcutaneous tissues. The epidermis, is the outer layer of skin that acts as a protective barrier and contains no blood vessels. Below the epidermis, is a thicker layer called dermis and that is where tattoos go.

Since we as humans are constatlly sheding the top layer of our epidermis, tattoo artists push ink through the epidermis and leave it in the dermis. The dermis pretty much stays the same throughtout our lifetime, hince the reason why tattoos are so permanant.

However, there is a science to tattooing, you have to be extra cautious that you only penetrate the skin 1.5 mm. If you go any further than that you will reach the subcutaneous layer and you don’t want to do this. It will more than likely be extra painful, bleed more and your tattoo will end up being blurry. Of course there are places on your body that need to be penetrated deeper and other places that don’t need to be penetrated as deep. A skilled tattoo artist knows the depths and boundaries on how far to penetrate your skin.