The Healing Guide
Your tattoo is an open wound with ink in it. For the next two weeks your job is simple: keep it clean, keep it moisturised, and stop touching it. Almost every ruined heal comes from doing too much, not too little.
Before anything else: follow the aftercare instructions your artist gave you. They know what they put in your skin, how deep it went and how long they were on it. This guide fills in the gaps — it does not overrule the person who did the work.
The standard heal — day by day
Leave the wrap on for as long as your artist told you — usually 2–4 hours for a standard wrap, or up to 3–5 days for a second-skin film. Do not peek.
When it comes off: wash your hands first. Rinse the tattoo under lukewarm running water with a fragrance-free soap, using clean fingers only — no cloth, no sponge, no scrubbing. Pat it dry with paper towel, never a bath towel. Let it air for ten minutes.
Restore Balm
Then the thinnest possible layer of Restore Balm on clean dry skin. Thin enough that it looks matte, not shiny. A drowned tattoo cannot breathe and will scab badly.
Expect plasma, ink and a bit of blood on your sheets. This is normal and it is why you sleep on an old towel. The tattoo will feel hot, tight and sunburnt.
Restore Balm
Wash and re-apply Restore Balm morning and night, and any other time it feels tight. Three washes a day is fine if you work with your hands or you sweat. Always dry it properly before balm goes on.
It starts to flake and it will itch like nothing else. Flaky skin coming off with a little colour in it is normal — that is dead skin, not your tattoo leaving.
Do not scratch and do not pick. Every scab you pull is a hole in the tattoo that has to be patched later. If the itch is unbearable, slap it lightly with a flat palm or apply balm — hydration kills the itch faster than anything.
The surface has closed and it looks healed. It is not. Underneath, the deeper layers are still settling, and the tattoo will look slightly cloudy or dull for a few weeks — that is a layer of new skin sitting over the ink. It clears.
Switch to Recovery Cream
Once the flaking has finished and there are no open patches, step down to Recovery Cream daily. Lighter, sinks in fast, no residue. This is the point where most people stop doing anything at all — and it is the exact point where the next ten years are decided.
Recovery Cream
Daily cream through the months the work takes to settle, and back to it whenever healed work needs freshening. Sixty seconds after a shower. Dry skin scatters light and makes black look grey. Hydrated skin holds colour.
And wear sunscreen on it. Sun is the single biggest cause of faded tattoos — more than age, more than aftercare, more than the artist. SPF 50 on exposed work, every time, once it is fully healed.
Heavy work and full-day sessions — the layered protocol
Big work is not a big version of small work. A full day in the chair, a multi-session rework over old ink, a full back, a solid black fill — the ink is driven in harder and the skin is worked for hours at a stretch, and it takes far more punishment than a short sitting ever delivers. The aftercare card you get handed is written for a small tattoo. Heavy work needs its own protocol.
Recovery Cream first, Restore Balm straight over the top. The cream carries hydration into skin that has been worked hard. The balm seals it in and shields it. This is the only time you use both in one application, and heavy work is the only time it is needed.
Once the worst is behind it, the skin doesn’t need flooding — it needs protecting while it knits. Thin layer, morning and night.
Weeks out, step down. Daily cream through the months heavy work takes to settle.
Normal — versus call your artist
Normal. Leave it alone.
- Redness and warmth around the lines for the first few days
- Plasma weeping, and ink on your sheets or clothes
- Flaking, peeling and coloured skin coming away
- Vicious itching around days 4–7
- A cloudy, dull, “milky” look for two to four weeks
- Small patchy spots that fill back in as it settles
Ring the studio. Today.
- Redness that keeps spreading outwards after day three
- Yellow or green discharge, or a smell
- Pain that is getting worse instead of better
- Fever, chills, or swollen glands
- A raised, hot, angry rash — possible reaction
- Red streaks running away from the tattoo — go to a doctor, not the studio
The list of ways people wreck a good tattoo
- Picking or scratching scabs — every one is a gap you will pay to have fixed
- Soaking it: no baths, pools, spas or ocean for at least two weeks
- Sun on a fresh tattoo, and no sunscreen on an unhealed one
- Slathering it — a thick greasy layer traps bacteria and makes scabbing worse
- Sharing a communal jar that has been open on a bench all week, or reaching for nappy cream and whatever else is in the bathroom cupboard
- Tight clothing, gym straps or anything that rubs over it
- Heavy training and heavy sweating in the first few days
- Letting a pet sleep on it, or re-wrapping it in clingfilm overnight
Why the balm is petrolatum
Ask around a studio and someone will tell you never to put petroleum jelly on a tattoo. That advice is half right, and it is worth understanding properly, because Restore Balm is built with petrolatum, and that is a deliberate decision.
Petrolatum is the most effective occlusive there is. It sits on the surface and holds the skin’s own moisture in while the work closes over — which is exactly the job in the first fortnight. Nothing on a chemist shelf does that part better.
It is not an outsider ingredient in this world, either. Petrolatum has been used on skin during tattooing for decades, precisely because it holds moisture at the surface without interfering with the work.
So the suspicion was never really about the ingredient. It was about four things:
A heavy layer stops the surface breathing, softens the scab and drags colour with it when it lifts. Thin enough to look matte, never shiny.
Straight petroleum jelly is an occlusive and nothing else. Nothing conditioning, nothing for comfort, nothing for the skin underneath.
An open container that has sat on a shelf all week is a contamination risk on skin that has not closed yet.
People stay on a heavy occlusive for months. Two weeks, then move to the cream. That is the whole reason this is a two-step set.
Restore Balm is petrolatum built properly: a high-purity grade with grape seed oil, beeswax and microcrystalline wax for structure, and chamomile, lavender and turmeric oils. Nine ingredients, sealed in a 60 ml jar. Thin layer, clean hands, two weeks, then step down.
Both ingredient lists are published in full on the FAQs page and on the product page. Nothing hidden.
We live and breathe tattoos — we know chemistry. Well enough to put the least fashionable ingredient in the range first on the label, and then explain exactly why it is there.
The part nobody tells you
Ask most people about aftercare and they will tell you about the first two weeks. That is the easy part — it is painful and obvious, so people do it.
Tattoos are not lost in month one. They are lost in year three. The line work softens, the black goes flat and grey, the colour drops half a stop, and nobody can point at the day it happened. That is sun, dry skin and neglect doing their work slowly. It is also almost entirely preventable, and it costs sixty seconds a day.
days of Restore Balm
Gets the wound closed cleanly, with no scabbing damage and no patchy heal. This is the part everybody already knows to do.
the daily sixty seconds
Recovery Cream through the months it takes to settle, and back to it whenever healed work needs freshening. Keeps colour reading full. This is the part almost nobody does — and it is the difference between a ten-year-old piece that still reads and one that has gone soft.
That is why The Ritual Duo is sealed and never sold apart. Selling you the balm on its own would be selling you half a job.
From the founder
The Ritual Duo
Restore Balm + Recovery Cream · 60 ml each · sealed set · $59.95
Ask at the counter at Squires Ink, or find it at telcollection.com.au
TEL Collection is Aqua747 Pty Ltd · ABN 62 679 571 021
Squires Ink Tattoo Studio · Shop 7/26 Orchid Ave, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217
This guide is general information for healthy adults and is not medical advice. It does not replace the instructions your artist gave you. If you have a skin condition, a known allergy, are pregnant, or you think your tattoo is infected, speak to your artist or a doctor.