Tattoo Ink and Colour Removal

Ink colour is the factor most likely to make your removal look nothing like someone else’s. Black is the easiest colour to clear because it absorbs every wavelength; from there difficulty climbs through blue and red into green, light blue and yellow, which absorb laser light poorly and need wavelengths a lot of clinics simply do not own. This is not a matter of a clinic trying harder. If the machine cannot produce the wavelength your green ink absorbs, the session will not move it, however many you buy.

There is one category that deserves a flag rather than a ranking: white and flesh-tone inks can paradoxically darken — turning grey or black on the first pulse — because the titanium dioxide and iron oxide in them chemically reduce under laser light. It is not rare and it is not a mistake by the practitioner. It is a property of the pigment, which is exactly why a test spot on these inks is not optional. The same chemistry sits behind the darkening warnings in our permanent-makeup guides.

If you have a colourful piece, read “Hardest Tattoo Colours to Remove” for the full difficulty ranking and the wavelength map behind it, then the guide for your specific colour — green, blue, red, or yellow, orange and purple. If your goal is a cover-up rather than bare skin, “Tattoo Removal for a Cover-Up” is the more relevant read: two to four fading sessions to lift a tattoo 50–70% gives your artist a far better canvas at a fraction of the cost of full clearance. And if your tattoo is amateur or stick-and-poke work, it will very likely need fewer sessions than professional ink — that guide explains why, and what the catch is.