How Does a Hair Tattoo Work?

A hair tattoo artist disguises hair loss by adding tiny dots of pigmentation to the scalp or face. This technique is called stippling and provides the illusion of hair follicles for men and women dealing with thinning hair. Here is more information about how our tattoo process works at Scalp Micro USA:

Get a Free Consultation

Before scheduling your hair tattoo appointment, we will conduct a consultation with you to determine your candidacy for the treatment. You can choose to have your consultation over the phone, through a video call, or in person at one of our clinics in New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, Chicago, and South Florida. During the consultation, we will ask questions to learn more about your current hair situation and your appearance goals. You should share your preferences on hairline design, scar tissue coverage, and pigment color and density.

How Hair Tattooing Works

Depending on the size of your treatment area, we will need to schedule two to four treatment sessions to complete your tattoo. Each session is spaced ten to twenty days apart to allow your skin to heal before we add more ink. Our specialized tattooing machines place pigment shallowly in the skin, creating tiny dots of ink that match your existing hair color. We create a custom pigment mixture for each tattoo by diluting brown or black ink with water.

What To Do After Your Hair Tattoo

After your final tattooing session, your body will take about four to five days to heal fully. During this time, you may experience some redness and itchiness on the treatment site. The itching sensation is a sign that your skin cells are recovering, so you should not scratch your new tattoo. To alleviate itching, we recommend keeping your body and skin hydrated and applying antibacterial ointment to assist in the healing process.

While your tattoo is healing, you should avoid exposing it to moisture, sweat, and bodies of water like pools, saunas, and lakes. Wash your new tattoo with warm water and gentle soap that is fragrance-free. Once your new tattoo has healed, you will be able to participate in outdoor and physical activities. Boost your healed skin’s health by wearing sunscreen or hats outside.

Get a Touch-Up

Once you have completed all of your treatment sessions and your skin has fully healed, your results will last between four to six years. As your skin naturally replaces itself over time, your tattoo may fade, which is why we offer touch-up services for our clients. Touch-up sessions involve artists making adjustments to your hairline, pigment density, and ink saturation. Whether you need more than one touch-up session depends on the surface area of your tattoo and how much it has faded. Fill-in tattoo touch-ups are brief, while whole-head micropigmentation touch-ups may require several sessions.

We Tattoo Scar Tissue

Accidents, hair restoration procedures, and other medical care can leave scars on the surface of your scalp. Most scar tissue does not contain hair follicles, so your hair is unable to regrow in these areas. We can camouflage scars by treating the affected area with micropigmentation.

For good results, we recommend that you allow your scars to fully heal before we tattoo them. Depending on the severity of the skin damage, scars may take between six and eighteen months to heal fully. During this period, the texture of your scar should soften and change color to become slightly lighter or darker than your natural skin tone. Our experienced artists are trained to tattoo this delicate skin type to create a natural, blended hair appearance.

How Our Tattoos Are Different From Traditional Tattoos

Micropigmentation treatments are different from traditional tattoos because our artists primarily use an art form called stippling. Stippling is the method of placing numerous small dots to cover an area. Our ink is specially formulated for micropigmentation, making it different from ink that is used in traditional tattooing. We use specialized ink that does not fade quickly because we tattoo at a shallower depth, only half a millimeter below the skin’s surface. Traditional tattoo artists set their ink about one or two millimeters deep.

Standard tattoos incorporate black linework with multiple layers of color to create full images on the skin. These tattoos may fade or expand according to the colors used and the artist’s technique. The specialized ink our micropigmentation artists use contains no extra additives. This means that your tattoo will not expand or change color over time.

Schedule Your Consultation Appointment Today

At Scalp Micro USA, we offer long-term solutions for individuals experiencing hair loss. We will explain each step of our tattoo process during your consultation appointment to help you customize your treatment and make informed decisions about your appearance. We will color-match our pigment to create results that look as natural as possible. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation.