Proper tattoo studio practices

The growing number of tattoo studios in Sydney is making it even more difficult for newcomers to distinguish between good tattoo studios and bad tattoo studios. If you're getting tattooed for the first time, there are a number of things you should keep in mind when deciding on where to go. Choosing a professional, clean and sterile tattoo studio is absolutely essential to your health and the health of your tattoo. When we get down to it, tattoo artists deal with blood for a living. Day in day out, their working environment, their clothes, their tattoo equipment and their tattoo needles are exposed to the blood of many different people. Fresh tattoos are essentially open wounds, so realistically, a tattoo studio should be no less sterile than a hospital or a surgery room. And you thought it was just about the art!

You can't simply rely on a tattoo studio's reputation to tell you whether or not they follow good practice. Go visiting a number of tattoo studios and have a look around when you enter them. A studio should be clean and orgnised - if it's not, you should try the next one. All tattoo studios should also be fitted with an autoclave - which they should use daily. This is used to sterilise all equipment, and it's the standard machine used by hospitals and scientists for sterilisation. Autoclaves use steam, heat and pressure to kill any living organisms on the tattoo equipment.

Also make sure you can see the tattoo artists using disposable gloves and disposable ink cups. Everything should be for single use only, as this reduces the chance of cross contamination. There are plenty of low-grade, shifty tattoo studios who might not follow this practice due to the high cost of throwing things away and constantly needing new supplies. But this is part of the deal when you own a tattoo studio - anything less means the tattoo artist is compromising proper health procedure. A professional tattoo artist should replace his gloves if he's touched anything besides the sterilised equipment or your skin. The old ones get binned and new ones are put on.

In a professional tattoo studio, you should expect to see your artist opening sterilised packets of equipment in front of you before he begins work. All bio-medcal waste should also be safely disposed of, using a proper biohazard disposal company. It's important for tattoo studios to follow such practices, as even after the tattoo is finished and the customer has left, the contaminated waste can still pose problems for the environment or anyone who comes across it.

Tattoo studios have to protect their customers from cross-contamination or infection. Getting tattooed at the right tattoo studios also means you're helping spread awareness reputable tattoo studios, and helping combat myths and false hype. Even if you hear a studio being called 'the best tattoo studio in Sydney', if they don't have their health practices in check you should look for a better one. There are many tattoo studios out there with lax health standards, and unfortunately many first-time customers don't know any better. Learning about the proper health practices of tattoo studios is important for protecting your welfare and best interests.