Getting a new tattoo and taking care of it can often be very daunting, especially if it is your first tattoo. You want to do everything right and make sure that you will not use anything on your skin that could have an unwanted effect on your tattoo. A lot of people who are going the natural route with tattoo aftercare these days have started using essential oils. These oils seem quite strong; are they a safe option for helping your tattoo heal? Can essential oils fade tattoos?
Essential oils cannot fade tattoos. According to recent studies, it has been shown that essential oils can, in fact, do the opposite, making the colors in your new tattoo appear more vibrant and the linework more bold and clean once it has healed.
To understand a little more about the role that essential oils can play in your tattoo and its healing process, we will need to look at what causes a tattoo to fade and what you can do to help prevent it from happening. Let us have a look at what essential oils can do and what could potentially cause your tattoo to fade.
What Causes A Tattoo To Fade?
For us to understand why essential oils cannot fade your tattoo, let us look at what does cause a tattoo to fade.
The process that causes your tattoo to fade is actually the way in which your skin heals. This means that after you get your tattoo if you take good care of your skin and allow it to heal well, your tattoo will last well.
However, if your skin is mistreated during this time, it may cause scarring or bad skin regrowth causing your tattoo to look old and faded.
This can also happen later on down the road if you do not take care of your tattooed skin. Skin trauma such as sunburn, weight gain, and excessive friction, which requires your skin to heal itself, could have the same negative effect on your tattoo, even years after it has healed.
Will Certain Essential Oils Make A Tattoo Fade?
Now that we understand that your skin not healing well after trauma is what causes a tattoo to fade, you can see that using essential oils could not fade your tattoo.
There are no essential oils that will cause your tattoo to fade, which means that you are free to use as many of them on your new and old tattoos as you would like, as they will help them heal and keep the skin fresh and moisturized.
There may not be essential oils that will make your tattoo fade. However, there may be essential oils that will helpless in the healing process than others would. Even with that being said, not even these essential oils will cause any harm to your skin or your tattoo should you choose to use them.
Since essential oils cause no trauma or damage to your skin and using them on your skin will in no way harm your tattoo, you can rest assured knowing that no essential oils can make your tattoo fade, as no essential oil will cause your skin to need to heal itself.
What Do Essential Oils Do To A Tattoo?
Essential oils are a really good source of nutrition for your skin, which means that they can help do the opposite of fading your tattoo, and actually, help your skin heal faster and even better than it might have healed if it had not had any assistance in the healing process.
These essential oils help prevent your skin from coming into issues such as an infection, scarring, or bad scabbing, and will help prevent your tattoo from drying out, as they will keep your skin moisturized while still allowing your skin to breathe. This is a crucial part of your tattoo healing well and can play a vital role in the way your skin heals.
So what do essential oils do to a tattoo? Essential oils will help support your skin through the healing process, giving it nutrients and moisture while still allowing it to breathe and grow the newly healed skin over and around the tattoo.
Because this assistance will help your skin so much in the healing process, the results of what your tattoo looks like afterward tend to be quite outstanding. Essential oils have been shown to help your skin retain more of the ink from your tattoo during the healing process, as you generally lose a fair amount of the ink through scabbing.
Essential oils help reduce the amount of scabbing that takes place in general while your tattoo is healing, which then, in turn, helps your body retain more of the ink. As the oils soak on and sink into your skin, they sink in with the colors, which makes your tattoo more vibrant.
These oils have been shown to reduce the trauma and inflammation caused by tattoos in the skin by such a significant amount, that when used regularly can often cut down the healing time of your tattoo by half.
What Essential Oils Should I Avoid On My Tattoo?
There are no essential oils that you would need to avoid putting on your skin or new tattoo, as there is not an essential oil that will cause any harm to your skin or that would cause an issue in your tattoo’s healing process.
However, there are some essential oils that will be of little to no use to you in this process, which would mean that purchasing them would just be a waste of your money.
One of these oils to avoid would be rosemary essential oil. Rosemary essential oil will cause you no harm and will not hinder your tattoo’s healing whatsoever; however, it does not have any healing properties that would help aid in your tattoo and skin’s healing process.
What you could use instead of rosemary essential oil would be a lavender essential oil, as lavender essential oil has many benefits that would help aid your skin in this healing process. Some of the many healing properties that lavender essential oil has that will help in the healing are that it helps prevent scarring, helps promote healing skin growth, and prevents infections in the skin.
Another oil that would be best to avoid purchasing would be thyme essential oil. Thyme essential oil, like rosemary essential oil, has many beneficial properties for your health; however, neither of them have many healing properties when it comes to your skin or wounds.
The oil that you could purchase instead of thyme essential oil would be peppermint essential oil. Peppermint essential oil will help aid your skin in healing well, as well as helping with issues such as your skin becoming itchy as it scabs and heals. Peppermint essential oil is an antibacterial oil; however, it is also used on skin issues such as bug bites, as it has a cooling property that helps reduce itching and soothes irritated skin.
Therefore, there is no “bad” essential oil to use on your tattoo, as none of them will cause you any harm; however, some of them may very well not benefit you in the slightest, and those essential oils are the essential oils to avoid putting on your tattoo.
Conclusion
Thankfully the answer is no; essential oils cannot fade tattoos, and what is even better than that is that they can, in fact, heal tattoos.
Even though essential oils will not fade your tattoos, we are now ell aware that everyday things, such as unprotected exposure to the sun, can fade them. To prevent any of your tattoos from fading, be sure to wear sunblock and take extra good care of your skin – so be sure to moisturize your tattooed skin regularly, whether you use essential oils or not.
If you are now looking forward to going out and buying some essential oils to use on your new up and coming tattoo, be sure to do your homework on which ones will help the most so that you do not waste your money and so that you can get the most out of your tattoo’s appearance post-healing.