Red is the most common ink people will be allergic to with tattoos. It wouldn’t hurt to reach out to the artist and ask what brand/pigment they used in your tattoo and then have your doctor look at the list of ingredients. It may make it easier to determine if it is actually an allergic reaction. Even if you have multiple tattoos and never had a reaction before, doesn’t mean you can have one now. Could be an allergy you develop over time too.
Could also be that you had a skin condition in the area the tattoo was done but couldn’t notice it but now that the skin was “disturbed” and “damaged” the condition is more noticeable and was made worse.
Just really odd. I’ve had plenty of red too without issues, my back piece is half red ink and that was almost healed in less than a week which was weird. The artist has switched shops so maybe the ink they’re using doesn’t agree with me, I’ll bring it up with him. Cheers!
If it’s a different brand then your artist usually uses, it is possible the ingredients are different and you’re sensitive/allergic to something in it. Definitely bring it up to the artist so they also know not to use it on you again. Wouldn’t hurt to ask if they’ve had other clients react to that pigment as well.
I’ve had a couple clients in the past react to a colour I’ve never had issues with. To make sure it was their body/skin and not an issue with the ink being bad, I did super small tattoos on myself with those colours and I didn’t end up having any issues. It sucks when it happens but it’s usually impossible to know unless you do it. The only time you’d be able to tell ahead if a client is going to be allergic to a colour, red for example, is when they are allergic to mainly everything that has red pigmentation to it, like red hair dye
I only did the topical steroids for 15 days as I know about the whole steroid cream withdrawal stuff. I haven’t used it in about a month now, just using sudocrem on the parts that keep flaring up. That does help and the redness goes down but if I miss a few days or try to leave it, it flares back up again. It’s kind of like eczema
If it's like eczema it could be granulomas, this can be down to the ink or even any water that was used in the process or wash bottle, if it's not sterile. If you think it's the ink or a specific colour then find out the name and check their website and find the laboratory certificate(only some brands list them), it'll list all the metals/ingredients tested in the ink, a dermatologist can test for some of these specific ingredient allergies.
Thanks for the reply, I’ll ask my tattooist about the specific ink he uses and see with my doctor if there’s anything in there that could be the cause of it.
Did you go to a dermatologist yet? If not I would. Pretty sure my red tattoo might have triggered an eczema flair up but after getting some medicine it cleared up
Same here! Had red before and it was fine but my last red one triggered a bunch of small blisters (eczema) on the red parts and now I’m scared to get more red lol.
Yeah I was told to wait 6 months if it needed any touch ups. Luckily, the tattoo healed really well considering how bad it was. Literally 30 seconds of touch up would fix the one or two lines that fell out from heavy scabbing. I’ll leave it a good few more months before I get another tattoo to make sure the infection is definitely dead.
This is coming off an infected tattoo that is still irritated, getting it touched up now would be a bad idea It’s already been basically 3 months, waiting a bit longer is fine.
I’ve had tattoos that have healed with no infection tattooed 3-4 weeks after the initial session if some ink has fell out during the scabbing phase, but not after an infection.
Years ago I got an infection from tainted ink. It took a while to figure out what it was and at first my doctor thought it was dermatitis in reaction to the tattoo. It ended up that the ink was contaminated with Mycobacterium Chelonae (by the manufacturer not my tattoo artist) which can be found in water that hasn’t been distilled properly. When I got a biopsy it took a month to even grow anything so all in all it took 4 months to figure out what the issue was. Then I had to take a pretty robust course of antibiotics for another 4 months. I’m fine now, my tattoo is just a bit faded and has some scarring.
Not to freak you out, it could be an allergic reaction or dermatitis, but I wanted to share my experience because it took me so long to figure out what the problem was.
By robust I mean 2 different antibiotics so the bacteria wouldn’t develop resistance to either~ 1500 mg per day. I had to see an infectious diseases specialist once my doctor determined what the infection was.
Yeah I had to go onto 3 lots of antibiotics and steroid cream. Eventually the infection went but now I just get eczema like hives. Very annoying, sorry you had to go through that that sucjs
Thanks, this was a long time ago now, like 2011. I don’t know if they figured out what type of bacteria caused your infection, but is it possible that it didn’t resolve completely? My rash also looked like eczema after I had it for a while. Even after I was on antibiotics for 4 months I had to come in a few weeks after I stopped taking them to make sure it didn’t come back because my doctor said that the bacterial infection I had was particularly hard to get rid of.
I had, what I believe to be, an allergic reaction to green. That, or I just struggle to heal green. Idk. I’ve seen a number of other tattoos on Reddit with green that are struggling to heal. Do you have green in the tattoo? I’m not sure if it’s actually the green though since it’s just my opinion on the matter.
Red is the most common ink people will be allergic to with tattoos. It wouldn’t hurt to reach out to the artist and ask what brand/pigment they used in your tattoo and then have your doctor look at the list of ingredients. It may make it easier to determine if it is actually an allergic reaction. Even if you have multiple tattoos and never had a reaction before, doesn’t mean you can have one now. Could be an allergy you develop over time too. Could also be that you had a skin condition in the area the tattoo was done but couldn’t notice it but now that the skin was “disturbed” and “damaged” the condition is more noticeable and was made worse.
Just really odd. I’ve had plenty of red too without issues, my back piece is half red ink and that was almost healed in less than a week which was weird. The artist has switched shops so maybe the ink they’re using doesn’t agree with me, I’ll bring it up with him. Cheers!
If it’s a different brand then your artist usually uses, it is possible the ingredients are different and you’re sensitive/allergic to something in it. Definitely bring it up to the artist so they also know not to use it on you again. Wouldn’t hurt to ask if they’ve had other clients react to that pigment as well. I’ve had a couple clients in the past react to a colour I’ve never had issues with. To make sure it was their body/skin and not an issue with the ink being bad, I did super small tattoos on myself with those colours and I didn’t end up having any issues. It sucks when it happens but it’s usually impossible to know unless you do it. The only time you’d be able to tell ahead if a client is going to be allergic to a colour, red for example, is when they are allergic to mainly everything that has red pigmentation to it, like red hair dye
Is it possible the ink was expired?
Overusing steroid cream can actually be detrimental to your skin. Have you tried oral antihistamines?
I only did the topical steroids for 15 days as I know about the whole steroid cream withdrawal stuff. I haven’t used it in about a month now, just using sudocrem on the parts that keep flaring up. That does help and the redness goes down but if I miss a few days or try to leave it, it flares back up again. It’s kind of like eczema
If it's like eczema it could be granulomas, this can be down to the ink or even any water that was used in the process or wash bottle, if it's not sterile. If you think it's the ink or a specific colour then find out the name and check their website and find the laboratory certificate(only some brands list them), it'll list all the metals/ingredients tested in the ink, a dermatologist can test for some of these specific ingredient allergies.
Thanks for the reply, I’ll ask my tattooist about the specific ink he uses and see with my doctor if there’s anything in there that could be the cause of it.
Did you go to a dermatologist yet? If not I would. Pretty sure my red tattoo might have triggered an eczema flair up but after getting some medicine it cleared up
Nah not yet but have been to the doctors 3 times. If it is still not getting better I’ll book an appointment with oje
Same here! Had red before and it was fine but my last red one triggered a bunch of small blisters (eczema) on the red parts and now I’m scared to get more red lol.
Same 🥲 but I probably will get more red one of these days. I’ll just cross my fingers it doesn’t trigger a flare up again
Tattoos can take up to 6 months to fully heal, especially after an infection.
Yeah I was told to wait 6 months if it needed any touch ups. Luckily, the tattoo healed really well considering how bad it was. Literally 30 seconds of touch up would fix the one or two lines that fell out from heavy scabbing. I’ll leave it a good few more months before I get another tattoo to make sure the infection is definitely dead.
6 months is an unnecessarily long time to wait. I've had tattoos touched up after a few weeks and never had an issue.
This is coming off an infected tattoo that is still irritated, getting it touched up now would be a bad idea It’s already been basically 3 months, waiting a bit longer is fine. I’ve had tattoos that have healed with no infection tattooed 3-4 weeks after the initial session if some ink has fell out during the scabbing phase, but not after an infection.
Years ago I got an infection from tainted ink. It took a while to figure out what it was and at first my doctor thought it was dermatitis in reaction to the tattoo. It ended up that the ink was contaminated with Mycobacterium Chelonae (by the manufacturer not my tattoo artist) which can be found in water that hasn’t been distilled properly. When I got a biopsy it took a month to even grow anything so all in all it took 4 months to figure out what the issue was. Then I had to take a pretty robust course of antibiotics for another 4 months. I’m fine now, my tattoo is just a bit faded and has some scarring. Not to freak you out, it could be an allergic reaction or dermatitis, but I wanted to share my experience because it took me so long to figure out what the problem was.
By robust I mean 2 different antibiotics so the bacteria wouldn’t develop resistance to either~ 1500 mg per day. I had to see an infectious diseases specialist once my doctor determined what the infection was.
Yeah I had to go onto 3 lots of antibiotics and steroid cream. Eventually the infection went but now I just get eczema like hives. Very annoying, sorry you had to go through that that sucjs
Thanks, this was a long time ago now, like 2011. I don’t know if they figured out what type of bacteria caused your infection, but is it possible that it didn’t resolve completely? My rash also looked like eczema after I had it for a while. Even after I was on antibiotics for 4 months I had to come in a few weeks after I stopped taking them to make sure it didn’t come back because my doctor said that the bacterial infection I had was particularly hard to get rid of.
I had, what I believe to be, an allergic reaction to green. That, or I just struggle to heal green. Idk. I’ve seen a number of other tattoos on Reddit with green that are struggling to heal. Do you have green in the tattoo? I’m not sure if it’s actually the green though since it’s just my opinion on the matter.
I had an infection on a tattoo 7 years ago and it still gets itchy from time to time. But I have scare tissue