What The Best Tattoo Cream? And Is One Really Necessary?

There are as many different opinions about tattoo aftercare as there are tattoo artists and people with tattoos. Some prefer a minimalist approach with very little aftercare. Others wrap tattooed parts in plastic for days to protect every drop of precious ink. Surely, though, the best approach is to order a tattoo aftercare kit and follow the instructions that come with it.

Truthfully, it probably doesn’t matter which tattoo cream you use as much as it matter that you use something. As with any injury, tattooed skin can scab over, scar, swell, get infected or take weeks to heal — depending on your body, how well you eat, whether you use alcohol and drugs and your genetic makeup.

You can predict how well your tattoos will heal by considering past injuries to your skin like cuts and scrapes. Think about these things:

  • Does you skin heal more quickly or more slowly than other people’s?
  • Do minor injuries leave a mark on you when they don’t on others?
  • Do you experience pain and swelling from relatively minor injuries?
  • Have you ever had a cut or scrape get infected?

If you’re slow to heal, often get marks from minor injuries and have a lot of pain or infection from injuries, you definitely need to use a tattoo cream, and, in fact, a full tattoo aftercare kit to make sure you take the best possible care of your ink.

As it turns out, some people have so much trouble healing that they really don’t seem to be good candidates for getting tattoos. Others have some trouble but can do okay if they use the right creams and products. And then there are those people who can have all the inking done that they want and never have any problems.

If you’re in that middle category — the ones that have some problems but not too many — you’re a good candidate for using a tattoo cream from a reputable maker to help you heal after having ink done. If you’re in the first category, you can forget tattooing altogether. And if you’re in the third category, you’ll probably do fine no matter what you do — but use a cream just in case.

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