Lately there has been a surge of people buying kits to tattoo at home to try their hand at tattooing. With cheap tattoo supplies being sold online and self-taught tattooers offering how-tos and tips it’s not surprise that people get the idea that they can tattoo at home with no major issues. This is all around a bad idea for multiple reasons.
For starters tattooers doing this out of their homes are unlicensed and it is illegal for an unlicensed ( or permitted) person to tattoo. Even if this person gets licensed/ permitted but doesn’t license their home that is also illegal to tattoo in an unlicensed location. This can lead to all types of potential legal headaches if you decide to either tattoo out of your home or allow yourself to be tattooed by someone who bought a kit online and claims to be a tattoo artist. It’s best to avoid that all together and head to a professional shop for a tattoo.
Which leads to the next point is the difference of at home and in a professional setting is the studio itself. The tattoo studio takes on all of the safety and sanitary precautions in order to provide a clean environment for the best tattoo. For example, all the surfaces in the shop are covered to ensure that they’re nonporous to avoid infection transmission, and all the equipment is sterilized and re-sterilized. Basically, every single decision is made in order to prevent the contamination of anything in a given workspace. In a home setting there can be all sorts of contaminating habits occurring that can lead to an unsafe and unsanitary space. You don’t know if they have kids, or pets, or if the space has been cleaned properly to ensure your safety. The risks which include blood borne pathogens, infections, and allergic reactions are much higher and more likely with an at home tattooer than a professional a studio who has been trained and licensed to protect you and themselves while tattooing.
The last point to consider is that most at home tattooers are not trained by a professional. It takes a lot more than watching a few YouTube videos and reading an article to be able to produce a high quality tattoo. An unskilled and untrained at home tattooer giving you a tattoo could lead to a bad tattoo that will need to be fixed or removed by a professional.
Overall the risks associated with going to an at home tattooer far outweighs any so called benefits that you may have heard. Make sure to do your research and pick an artist who is licensed or holds a permit, trained, and works in a clean and safe studio to give you a tattoo or you might regret it in more ways than one.
