Non-laser options for attempting to remove a tattoo are not very appealing.

Cover-up Tattoos

Cover-up tattoos are often offered as an option for hiding a tattoo someone no longer wants.

The most common tattoos that are covered up in my experience are people’s names. Most relationships don’t last nearly as long as the average tattoo, so hiding the name of a once-loved one is a common request.

The problems with cover-up tattoos are many-fold. For one thing, tattoos designed as cover-ups are almost always, by definition, compromises. Choices have to be made about colors, locations and designs that take into account the tattoo to be hidden, and are thus not optimal choices. In addition, it’s impossible to know what the combination of the new and covered-up tattoo will look like. Lastly, the combination of the hidden tattoo and the cover-up is much harder to remove than the original tattoo alone would have been. This is especially true when the tattoo being covered up is black, and the new cover-up is multi-colored.

As a laser surgeon, this combination is something I’m especially sad to see, as multi-colored tattoos are more often much more challenging to remove than simple black ones.