Pain Management for Laser Tattoo Removal - What's worth it?

I’ve been providing laser tattoo removal for almost 8 years and the most common questions I get asked about laser tattoo removal is about the pain.

How bad does it hurt? Does it hurt worse than getting it? What can I do to help the pain? What does it feel like after?

The truth - it hurts. It’s annoying how bad it hurts. Trust me, I’ve lasered myself. In my opinion and many others it feels like a strong rubber band flick. There’s also many factors that play into how intense the pain is like where it is on your body, how saturated the color is, what color it is, etc.

There are pain management options out there and I have good and bad experience with all of them. Lets discuss.

First up is numbing cream.

Numbing cream can be helpful for laser tattoo removal but it also has it’s downfalls. Any numbing agent can irritate the skin. The skin typically becomes swollen and red just with the numbing cream. When your skin is already irritated like this, it can typically cause your healing to be much more difficult afterwards and even prolong your removal process.

Next, we have ice and cold air.

We’ve tried to cooling machine and although I believe it can help some clients - most of our clients agreed, it didn’t really do anything but cause a bit of a distraction.

But icing the area before laser tattoo removal is really, in my opinion, the only all around effective way to help with the pain during the treatment and HELP with heal time.

Your skin in naturally trapping heat in your skin when you get a laser treatment. One of the main things I tell my clients is to immediately go home and ice your tattoo. So icing prior, can actually help pain management and help prevent blistering in your laser tattoo removal process.

As always, our consultations are always free. If you’re reading this because you’re intimated about laser tattoo removal, it’s nothing we can’t get through together!

Tyffanie Rogers