Getting a tattoo is an important—and permanent—decision. When you’re first deciding on the art you’d like to have permanently inked into your skin, there are a lot of things to consider. But even if you carefully consider things like the placement of your tattoo, the size of your new ink, the art itself, and the tattoo artist you’ll be working with, sometimes you can end up with a tattoo that you aren’t fond of once some time has passed. 

When this happens, you only have a few options. You can live with a tattoo that you’re no longer head over heels for on your skin, invest in tattoo removal services, or cover up the tattoo with some new body art. All three options are valid depending on your circumstances, budget, and needs, but one of the most popular options out there is getting a cover-up tattoo, which still often involves some level of laser tattoo removal.

Why Get a Cover-Up Tattoo?

There are countless reasons why you might be considering a cover-up tattoo. Maybe you made the common, and unfortunate, mistake of getting a tattoo related to an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend and now the tattoo brings up painful memories. Maybe you got a tattoo on a spot on your body that you’re regretting. Sometimes a tattoo simply doesn’t age well, especially if you were tattooed by a friend instead of a professional or if it was done on a whim during a crazy night out. You need only watch a handful of the popular TV shows about cover-up tattoos like Tattoo Nightmares or Tattoo Redo to realize the variety of reasons someone might want to cover up an old tattoo.

You might be reading this and thinking “but I love my tattoo,” and if that’s the case, then forget about getting a cover-up! But for some, investing in a cover-up tattoo is a viable option if you’re looking to retire one of your tattoos—whatever your reason.

Cover-Up Options

If you’ve decided that you want to replace some of your old body art with new ink, there are a couple of different options available to you. At Certified Tattoo Studios, we will work with you to cover up an old tattoo entirely, or use laser tattoo removal to fade your old tattoo so a new one can be inked over your old design. 

Each option comes with its own drawbacks and benefits.

If you choose to simply have a new tattoo inked over your old one without first using laser tattoo removal to fade the tattoo, your design options may be more limited. The design of a cover-up tattoo depends largely on the tattoo that is being covered up. Without fading, this could mean your design will need to include certain elements in order to successfully cover up the tattoo. This could mean, for example, that certain colors are necessary for your new tattoo design to cover up darker colors in the old tattoo, or that the tattoo will need to be a certain size to cover the existing tattoo. This option does mean that you won’t need to invest as much time and money into laser tattoo removal, however, so it definitely has some benefits.

If you choose to use laser tattoo removal to first fade your old tattoo before getting a new design, your options can broaden a bit when it comes to the designs you can choose from. When a laser is used to fade your old tattoo, dark colors that are hard to cover up can become easier to incorporate into a new tattoo design. Similarly, some areas of the tattoo can be removed almost entirely so that your old tattoo size doesn’t need to dictate your new tattoo’s size as much. The drawbacks to using laser tattoo removal to fade your tattoo before getting a cover-up are, of course, the time and cost involved.

For both a cover-up tattoo with laser removal beforehand or a cover-up tattoo without using a laser ahead of time, the costs can vary. Cover-ups are different than getting a tattoo on a spot on your skin that has never been tattooed before since they depend on many pre-existing factors like the size, color, and shape of your previous tattoo. This means that the cost of your cover-up can vary, so we recommend contacting the studio to talk with one of our artists and get a better idea of what costs you can expect.

How Does a Cover Up Tattoo Work?

Regardless of whether you started with a bold tattoo, a naturally faded tattoo, or a laser-faded tattoo, cover-up tattoos work in relatively the same way. Because of how tattoos work and the way ink is deposited into the second layer of your skin, cover-ups are a bit more complicated than simply applying a new tattoo over your old one.

Ink is deposited into the same layer of skin—the dermis—as a regular tattoo. This means that the ink from your new tattoo mixes with the ink from your old tattoo. As you might imagine, this can make the colors in a cover-up tattoo a bit trickier. Our expert artists will be able to give you a good idea of what the colors from your new tattoo will look like in combination with your old ink. Because the colors mix in your skin, different tattoo pigments might need to be used for your new tattoo to achieve a specific color. Yellow ink might need to be used on your new tattoo to achieve a green color if your old tattoo is blue, for example. Darker colors also typically end up overriding lighter colors in a cover-up tattoo, so that is something our artists will take into consideration when working with you to design your cover-up tattoo as well.

Other than these considerations that your tattoo artist will take into account when applying your cover-up tattoo, the process is often quite similar to your previous tattoo experiences. There’s a little bit of extra thought and skill that must go into the planning and inking of a cover-up tattoo, but our artists at Certified Tattoo Studios—some of the best tattoo artists in Denver—are always up for the challenge. If you’re in need of some replacement art for one of your tattoos that no longer fits with who you are, look no further. At Certified Tattoo Studios, we don’t abandon art, we replace it.