Use common household items to lighten your tattooed skin naturally. Lemon and lime juice, glycolic acid, and hydrogen peroxide can all produce mild bleaching action when applied directly to the skin. Chances are, you have one or more of these items sitting around in your pantry or medicine cabinet right now.
Laser Surgery
This is by far the most common, fastest, safest, as well as a most effective way of removing your tattoos. The disadvantage – this method is painful and expensive. Through this method, the ink's pigment colors are broken-up, due to high-intensity light beam exposure.
One of the most common home tattoo removal methods we see talked about is salabrasion or rubbing the skin away with salt. It's an old method, and it does technically work, provided you rub enough skin off to reach the layer where the ink is held. You could also achieve the same effect with coarse sand or sandpaper.
Why Vaseline and petroleum-based jelly aren't great for a new tattoo. Petroleum-based products can cause ink to fade and may trap moisture and bacteria on top of the tattoo, increasing your risk of developing an infection. Use water-based moisturizers on new tattoos instead.
Hydrogen Peroxide and Exfoliation - Exfoliation paired with hydrogen peroxide can do wonders to gradually fade tattoo ink naturally.
Proper Tattoo Removal
However, these DIY processes may open up your skin (literally!) to the risk of infection, scarring, and permanent discoloration, so it's recommended you stay away from at-home removal altogether and instead turn to the professionals.
Over time, cells from your immune system – called macrophages - gradually absorb the tattoo ink and disperse it, which can lead to some tattoo fading. On top of this, factors such as sunlight, friction and improper care of your tattoos can all accelerate the process of aging your skin and/or fading your tattoos.
You can opt for surgical removal if your tattoo is small enough, or you can go for dermabrasion and scrape off the top layer of your skin. Apart from this, you can consult a specialist, and they can prescribe a topical cream that will slowly fade the tattoo away.
Use Water-Based Lotions
The AAD states that petroleum-based products, like petroleum jelly itself, can actually cause your tattoo ink to fade. Look for a water-based moisturizer or cream instead to hydrate your tattooed skin when it's in need of moisture.
At-home and DIY tattoo removal methods like hydrogen peroxide should be left to urban myth and tall tales, and never attempted. They are ineffective and worse, could lead to skin damage.
However, if you receive a tattoo from an experienced professional, it will be placed at an ideal depth in the dermis layer of your skin where it should remain for decades to come, at the least. Aloe vera will not detract from the vibrancy nor the longevity of your ink.
The answer, in short, is NO! While you may see stories online about tattoo removal with a mixture of salt and water, this practice not only does not remove the tattoo, but also increases your risk of skin damage, infection and permanent scarring.
So it's important to listen to your tattoo artist's suggestions when it comes to washing and cleaning the area — which usually means avoiding rubbing it with anything abrasive, like a loofah or sponge. You really don't want to scratch the area or rub off scabs, since that can cause your tattoo to fade or smudge.
Tattoos that are solid black typically lighten with less treatments. You can begin the lightening process on a new tattoo gone wrong just as soon as the unwanted tattoo is completely healed. Lightening newer tattoos is a longer process because new tattoos have more color saturation.
Black tattoos are the easiest to remove because the laser is able to target the black pigment more precisely. Other colors such as red, blues, and greens can become more difficult to remove depending whether the tattoos were amateur or professional. Green is the hardest color to remove followed by light blue.
Many people believe that hot water is the enemy of tattoos, but this is actually a myth. While it's true that you should avoid soaking your tattoo in hot water for the first few weeks, showering with hot water is perfectly fine.
A tattoo that is poorly maintained can begin to experience some very slight fading after the first year. A tattoo that receives the appropriate care may not experience noticeable fading for many years – even a decade! The standard falls somewhere in the middle of that.
Why can't I use vitamin E on my tattoos? Vitamin E is meant to remove impurities in the skin, to your body the ink is an impurity. The vitamin E can actually remove the ink from your skin causing spots and damage. Many added vitamins can do damage to your new tattoo, so be careful and listen to your artist.
Q-switched lasers — which release energy in a single, powerful pulse — are often the treatment of choice for tattoo removal. A special type of laser — called a Q-switched Nd:YAG — might be used on darker skin to avoid changing the skin's pigment permanently.
Yes, sandpaper is quite capable of removing a tattoo, but it's definitely not recommended: To get to deep layers of skin where the ink is, you'd be risking extensive scarring and infection. Using sandpaper on your skin can also result in an incomplete removal of the tattoo, not to mention an awful lot of pain.