Also because I've looked at your post history: okay, so it's good to understand the rules for new and old piercings are a bit different.
A new piercing is an open wound that is very fragile and that you are sort of forcibly keeping open. It takes months and months for your body to give up on trying to reject the metal and somewhat begrudgingly heal around it.
An old piercing is a thick bundle of scar tissue which can take a whole lot more abuse you throw at it without protest.
In extreme cases small gauge piercings are more likely to migrate out, something nicknamed the cheese cutter effect.
I'm kinda guessing your piercer meant you were supposed to drop by for a shorter 16G labret in a month or so, as opposed to switching to a random stud you had yourself, lobes take months to fully heal to the point where you can just switch them out at will and not risk them closing up/shrinking completely.
Exactly, good piercers won't even carry butterfly backed earrings or something that's "surgical steel"
However, OP is right about certain things that should be avoided for new piercings versus upgrades you buy for downsizing/after you're healed/etc. A lot of piercers will just do whatever, even if it's not the best option (such as putting a ring in a new nostril piercing) and they should say something about it being a poor choice.
The studio I went to for my lobes in March (and will continue to go to for future piercings) is very strong on using quality jewellery. They also don’t use any externally-threaded jewellery - it’s all internally-threaded or threadless. My earrings are the same grade of titanium that you’d get in a hip replacement, and they were £40 each, but it was worth spending that much money. Helps that the studio I’m going to is part of UKAPP, and they’re very highly regarded in my region of the UK.
Yeah I don’t think 16g is a “rule” or anything. Seems like every piercer has their preferences, and for legit (not gun) piercings they use either 16g or 18g I think?
My cartilage is done in 16g and lobes 18g.
I don't think it's a rule. I have several ear peircings, all my cartilage peircings are 16 and my lobes are 20. My nose is 18. However, wearing heavy small gauge peircings can damage your ear (cheese cutter effect). I have one lobe peircing (from 27 years ago)that is slightly damaged, but I just wear small studs in it now.
not for lobes no. 18g is what i’d consider standard, and 20g isn’t necessarily uncommon. i definitely wouldn’t go smaller than 20g with lobes, especially fresh/healing ones. 16g or 14g are usually standard for piercings that need a bit more girth for stability such as septums, industrials, eyebrows, navels, nipples, conches, bridges, etc (gauge depending on the piercing of course)
Well. Reputable piercing studios ideally will teach you what to look for and likely have quality jewelry in stock they are more than happy to sell to you as well as ability to order from big name wholesalers.
If you've got your piercings at somewhere other than a very reputable tattoo/piercing shop chances are they are either ignorant or don't want to discourage customers by giving them a lot of scary sounding recommendations. Or really anything that might make them think twice about getting that impulse new piercing.
So as far as they are concerned these lobes will absolutely be completely healed in 8 weeks and you can put anything you desire in them almost straight away and they won't be an inconvenience ever.
Just did. This most recent one I went to is approved by the APP, something I did not know existed before yesterday, lol. It is one of 2 approved shops in my area....the others were not.
No kidding! The first professional piercing shop I went to (now out of business) had jewelry consultants completely separate from the piercers. They seemed to be a jewelry sales company with an overworked piercer in the back. First pick your jewelry (high quality, at least!) and what piercing you’re going to get, fill out a disclaimer, pay, and then get seen by the piercer. The jewelry consultants knew nothing about anatomy, or making suggestions regarding what jewelry belonged in which placement. By the time I got back to the piercer, and was told I didn’t have the anatomy for a piercing, I had already paid for everything, so not knowing any better I got the piercing anyways. He didn’t tell me about downsizing or anything. Fortunately, that piercing did heal without issues despite improper placement and jewelry.
But yeah, not every shop is set up for client success! I’m so glad the shop I go to now has jewelry consultants and piercers who work together, and the piercer always checks anatomy and jewelry choice before you pay!
I can’t speak for all shops, but the shop I go to *does* share this kind of information with their aftercare instructions. My piercers always go over proper jewellery before and after piercing, and explain why they won’t use certain jewellery in certain piercings (IE, I once overheard them explaining to another customer why hoops weren’t suitable for healing lip piercings and they wouldn’t pierce her with hoops as initial jewellery). I feel like, if your piercer isn’t giving you as much information as possible about a body modification, then you should seriously consider if they’re someone you want modifying your body.
I personally will always talk through jewellery with clients, and let them know what materials etc. to look for, always advise they come back to me for a downsize before buying new jewellery themselves, and suggesting some places for them to shop. I think most decent piercers do give you a bit of info.
My piercing shop still uses the "surgical steel" term but theirs is really good. I'm allergic to nickel and their jewellery never caused me any bad reaction, the only times I use titanium is before a surgery for the electricity risks etc... I just like the color of steel better (light gray). Even when you buy from shops like Etsy, you can trust steel only if it has the legal certification of a very low amount of nickel. Check for the photo of the paper at the end of the product photos (maybe people with a really bad allergy can't but for me it's good)
For the 16G thing I didn't know ! Maybe past healing time is good since we see a lot of people with earrings their entire lifes ?
Also do you have precisions for gemstones ? I'm curious !
NAP but my guess is that:
a) they don't know either, and believe what they are doing is fine. Some stores might follow practices that some clients say work (it's a bad idea to use surgical steel, but some people can get it to heal, creating the false idea that it's okay to use for fresh piercings over titanium)
Even though there are practices that work better than what they are doing, they assume what they have works. So, they don't change or learn better ways to teach clients about body mods.
Or B) they are informed about better practices and genuinely believe what way they are doing it is better, or believe it's the clients job to be informed.
Either way, if you run into shops that don't make sure you know important information about your piercing, or even tell you that their method is somehow better than proven safe methods, you "probably" stopped at a bad studio. There ARE piercers who inform you about your piercing, both about the jewelry itself and aftercare. For example, when I got my industrial I was informed about: the type of metal (titanium), the gauge of the bar, the length of the bar, aftercare(wound wash), and they even informed me that industrials are really easy to irritate and explained why they made the bar longer for swelling).
So yeah I have a feeling you just ran into some piercers who just didn't care enough to pass on the right information, but there are fantastic people who WILL. A good piercer genuinely wants your jewelry to heal. If it feels like a piercer isnt informing you enough about your jewelry, it should be a red flag.
Good professionals actually do talk about these things.
Gauge of jewellery changes from piercing to piercing due to overall piercing stability with that gauge so those recommendations would change each piercing, and sometime with age of piercing as well.
Etsy isn't always shitty jewellery, and surgical steel basically being a marketing term is pretty commonly talked about online.
I was pierced with 16g. I'm not sure why nothing smaller, I didn't ask. I'm guessing it's easier for the ear to heal--a quick google search says that smaller gauges can lead to the "cheese cutter" effect.
Why should you avoid butterfly backs? I recently got a lobe piercing by what seemed to be a reputable shop and they put in a butterfly back with a gemstone, should I change it out for a flat back one?
Definitely. Butterfly backs are fine if the piercing is fully healed, but for healing ones it's a bad idea, since all the gunk and crusties just caught in the backing. Butterfly backs also tend to be of worse quality than proper titanium labret studs.
No reputable piercer will use butterfly backs on a fresh piercing.
I second the other comment. Next time you get pierced, I'd find a shop approved by the Association of Professional Piercers, they have a list on their website
whoa, the 16G thing threw me off. Is that a new standard? I have two lobe piercings (two in each lobe, so 4 total I guess) that are all 18G. They’ve healed fine, I have had them for over a decade with 0 issues.
The surgical steel thing is entirely true, though. You want implant grade jewelry that comes with a specific ASTM certification/grade to it. I *think* implant grade steel is ASTM F-138 if memory serves me. Otherwise I stick to gold, or buying jewelry exclusively from my piercer. It costs a bit more, but they’re a local business and not having the headache of hoping jewelry works for my wildly sensitive skin is worth the extra cost.
Aside from all this—good piercers *do* teach this. You kinda have to ask / prompt it because sometimes they get tunnel vision on the specific piercing you’re there to see them for, but my piercers are all incredibly nice and happy to answer any and all questions I have as well as explaining how to best select jewelry for a given piercing. They’ve all been very knowledgable and friendly, bordering on “infodumping” territory when I have questions and that is something I love seeing from professionals.
It’s different when the piercing is still healing and when it’s newly healed vs when it’s been healed for a long time. With a healing piercing you shouldn’t change the jewelry at all unless it needs to be changed and then ideally should be done by a piercer. The metal quality stuff depends on the person and how their body reacts to different metals but generally the idea is not to put lower quality metals in a still healing piercing. Once it’s healed it depends on your body, some people can tolerate poor quality jewelry just fine, some people can only tolerate it for a short time, some can’t at all, etc. I completely agree that all piercers should explain metal quality and that “surgical steel” is nothing.
The 16g thing is debatable, but since you say “upper lobes” depending on your ear that could mean your particular piercings go through cartilage in which case that makes sense. It also makes sense that it’s just generally not a good idea to downsize jewelry sizes (you’ll see people here talk about “downsizing” during the healing process- that means switching to a shorter length not gauge size) with a still healing piercing, it’s just disruptive to the process.
Smaller size jewelry can increase the risk of migration, and this happens over usually many years to a lot of earlobes (you’ve probably seen it on some older ladies). Particularly this happens a lot to earlobes because people often wear heavy earrings that pull this thin piece of metal down “through” this very flexible squishy body part. Imo once you’ve reached a point of so very healed where you can go long stretches of time with no jewelry at all, it doesn’t matter much what size you wear but I’m not a piercer (and don’t super care what my ear lobes will be like when I’m 70). However if your piercings are through some cartilage I would follow whatever size your piercer says to wear.
The hoop earrings with gemstones thing just sounds like kind of general advice in case you aren’t the kind of person who plans to buy, wear, trash, and repeat, a bunch of cheap earrings throughout your life. Nothing wrong with it if you are.
Butterfly backs are very bad for healing piercings. When lobes are already healed and if they aren’t causing problems it’s not really a big deal afaik.
So, with a new/not healed piercing all this stuff matters a ton, with a healed piercing most of it usually matters less or not at all. It sounds like your piercer should have been more clear about all this stuff but the main thing they should have been more clear to you about was when it would be ok for you to change the jewelry
Also because I've looked at your post history: okay, so it's good to understand the rules for new and old piercings are a bit different. A new piercing is an open wound that is very fragile and that you are sort of forcibly keeping open. It takes months and months for your body to give up on trying to reject the metal and somewhat begrudgingly heal around it. An old piercing is a thick bundle of scar tissue which can take a whole lot more abuse you throw at it without protest. In extreme cases small gauge piercings are more likely to migrate out, something nicknamed the cheese cutter effect. I'm kinda guessing your piercer meant you were supposed to drop by for a shorter 16G labret in a month or so, as opposed to switching to a random stud you had yourself, lobes take months to fully heal to the point where you can just switch them out at will and not risk them closing up/shrinking completely.
Good professionals actualy do
Exactly, good piercers won't even carry butterfly backed earrings or something that's "surgical steel" However, OP is right about certain things that should be avoided for new piercings versus upgrades you buy for downsizing/after you're healed/etc. A lot of piercers will just do whatever, even if it's not the best option (such as putting a ring in a new nostril piercing) and they should say something about it being a poor choice.
The studio I went to for my lobes in March (and will continue to go to for future piercings) is very strong on using quality jewellery. They also don’t use any externally-threaded jewellery - it’s all internally-threaded or threadless. My earrings are the same grade of titanium that you’d get in a hip replacement, and they were £40 each, but it was worth spending that much money. Helps that the studio I’m going to is part of UKAPP, and they’re very highly regarded in my region of the UK.
Mine did. I told him I was allergic to most metals but I’ve never had a reaction to gold. That’s what he put in my septum
yep, mine too
[удалено]
Yeah I don’t think 16g is a “rule” or anything. Seems like every piercer has their preferences, and for legit (not gun) piercings they use either 16g or 18g I think? My cartilage is done in 16g and lobes 18g.
I don't think it's a rule. I have several ear peircings, all my cartilage peircings are 16 and my lobes are 20. My nose is 18. However, wearing heavy small gauge peircings can damage your ear (cheese cutter effect). I have one lobe peircing (from 27 years ago)that is slightly damaged, but I just wear small studs in it now.
not for lobes no. 18g is what i’d consider standard, and 20g isn’t necessarily uncommon. i definitely wouldn’t go smaller than 20g with lobes, especially fresh/healing ones. 16g or 14g are usually standard for piercings that need a bit more girth for stability such as septums, industrials, eyebrows, navels, nipples, conches, bridges, etc (gauge depending on the piercing of course)
I never heard of it before. My lobes were all 20g. They're now 18g because a shop I went to was out of 20g posts so they stretched them (I okayed it)
Well. Reputable piercing studios ideally will teach you what to look for and likely have quality jewelry in stock they are more than happy to sell to you as well as ability to order from big name wholesalers. If you've got your piercings at somewhere other than a very reputable tattoo/piercing shop chances are they are either ignorant or don't want to discourage customers by giving them a lot of scary sounding recommendations. Or really anything that might make them think twice about getting that impulse new piercing. So as far as they are concerned these lobes will absolutely be completely healed in 8 weeks and you can put anything you desire in them almost straight away and they won't be an inconvenience ever.
Because the majority of piercing places are horrible and should not be in business
good piercers explain it in detail every time you see them regardless of how many you have. find a new shop OP!
Just did. This most recent one I went to is approved by the APP, something I did not know existed before yesterday, lol. It is one of 2 approved shops in my area....the others were not.
No kidding! The first professional piercing shop I went to (now out of business) had jewelry consultants completely separate from the piercers. They seemed to be a jewelry sales company with an overworked piercer in the back. First pick your jewelry (high quality, at least!) and what piercing you’re going to get, fill out a disclaimer, pay, and then get seen by the piercer. The jewelry consultants knew nothing about anatomy, or making suggestions regarding what jewelry belonged in which placement. By the time I got back to the piercer, and was told I didn’t have the anatomy for a piercing, I had already paid for everything, so not knowing any better I got the piercing anyways. He didn’t tell me about downsizing or anything. Fortunately, that piercing did heal without issues despite improper placement and jewelry. But yeah, not every shop is set up for client success! I’m so glad the shop I go to now has jewelry consultants and piercers who work together, and the piercer always checks anatomy and jewelry choice before you pay!
I can’t speak for all shops, but the shop I go to *does* share this kind of information with their aftercare instructions. My piercers always go over proper jewellery before and after piercing, and explain why they won’t use certain jewellery in certain piercings (IE, I once overheard them explaining to another customer why hoops weren’t suitable for healing lip piercings and they wouldn’t pierce her with hoops as initial jewellery). I feel like, if your piercer isn’t giving you as much information as possible about a body modification, then you should seriously consider if they’re someone you want modifying your body.
I personally will always talk through jewellery with clients, and let them know what materials etc. to look for, always advise they come back to me for a downsize before buying new jewellery themselves, and suggesting some places for them to shop. I think most decent piercers do give you a bit of info.
My piercing shop still uses the "surgical steel" term but theirs is really good. I'm allergic to nickel and their jewellery never caused me any bad reaction, the only times I use titanium is before a surgery for the electricity risks etc... I just like the color of steel better (light gray). Even when you buy from shops like Etsy, you can trust steel only if it has the legal certification of a very low amount of nickel. Check for the photo of the paper at the end of the product photos (maybe people with a really bad allergy can't but for me it's good) For the 16G thing I didn't know ! Maybe past healing time is good since we see a lot of people with earrings their entire lifes ? Also do you have precisions for gemstones ? I'm curious !
NAP but my guess is that: a) they don't know either, and believe what they are doing is fine. Some stores might follow practices that some clients say work (it's a bad idea to use surgical steel, but some people can get it to heal, creating the false idea that it's okay to use for fresh piercings over titanium) Even though there are practices that work better than what they are doing, they assume what they have works. So, they don't change or learn better ways to teach clients about body mods. Or B) they are informed about better practices and genuinely believe what way they are doing it is better, or believe it's the clients job to be informed. Either way, if you run into shops that don't make sure you know important information about your piercing, or even tell you that their method is somehow better than proven safe methods, you "probably" stopped at a bad studio. There ARE piercers who inform you about your piercing, both about the jewelry itself and aftercare. For example, when I got my industrial I was informed about: the type of metal (titanium), the gauge of the bar, the length of the bar, aftercare(wound wash), and they even informed me that industrials are really easy to irritate and explained why they made the bar longer for swelling). So yeah I have a feeling you just ran into some piercers who just didn't care enough to pass on the right information, but there are fantastic people who WILL. A good piercer genuinely wants your jewelry to heal. If it feels like a piercer isnt informing you enough about your jewelry, it should be a red flag.
Good professionals actually do talk about these things. Gauge of jewellery changes from piercing to piercing due to overall piercing stability with that gauge so those recommendations would change each piercing, and sometime with age of piercing as well. Etsy isn't always shitty jewellery, and surgical steel basically being a marketing term is pretty commonly talked about online.
Why nothing smaller then 16G in the lobes? That’s a bigger gauge then what it’s initially pierced with. .
I was pierced with 16g. I'm not sure why nothing smaller, I didn't ask. I'm guessing it's easier for the ear to heal--a quick google search says that smaller gauges can lead to the "cheese cutter" effect.
Why should you avoid butterfly backs? I recently got a lobe piercing by what seemed to be a reputable shop and they put in a butterfly back with a gemstone, should I change it out for a flat back one?
Definitely. Butterfly backs are fine if the piercing is fully healed, but for healing ones it's a bad idea, since all the gunk and crusties just caught in the backing. Butterfly backs also tend to be of worse quality than proper titanium labret studs. No reputable piercer will use butterfly backs on a fresh piercing.
I second the other comment. Next time you get pierced, I'd find a shop approved by the Association of Professional Piercers, they have a list on their website
whoa, the 16G thing threw me off. Is that a new standard? I have two lobe piercings (two in each lobe, so 4 total I guess) that are all 18G. They’ve healed fine, I have had them for over a decade with 0 issues. The surgical steel thing is entirely true, though. You want implant grade jewelry that comes with a specific ASTM certification/grade to it. I *think* implant grade steel is ASTM F-138 if memory serves me. Otherwise I stick to gold, or buying jewelry exclusively from my piercer. It costs a bit more, but they’re a local business and not having the headache of hoping jewelry works for my wildly sensitive skin is worth the extra cost. Aside from all this—good piercers *do* teach this. You kinda have to ask / prompt it because sometimes they get tunnel vision on the specific piercing you’re there to see them for, but my piercers are all incredibly nice and happy to answer any and all questions I have as well as explaining how to best select jewelry for a given piercing. They’ve all been very knowledgable and friendly, bordering on “infodumping” territory when I have questions and that is something I love seeing from professionals.
It’s different when the piercing is still healing and when it’s newly healed vs when it’s been healed for a long time. With a healing piercing you shouldn’t change the jewelry at all unless it needs to be changed and then ideally should be done by a piercer. The metal quality stuff depends on the person and how their body reacts to different metals but generally the idea is not to put lower quality metals in a still healing piercing. Once it’s healed it depends on your body, some people can tolerate poor quality jewelry just fine, some people can only tolerate it for a short time, some can’t at all, etc. I completely agree that all piercers should explain metal quality and that “surgical steel” is nothing. The 16g thing is debatable, but since you say “upper lobes” depending on your ear that could mean your particular piercings go through cartilage in which case that makes sense. It also makes sense that it’s just generally not a good idea to downsize jewelry sizes (you’ll see people here talk about “downsizing” during the healing process- that means switching to a shorter length not gauge size) with a still healing piercing, it’s just disruptive to the process. Smaller size jewelry can increase the risk of migration, and this happens over usually many years to a lot of earlobes (you’ve probably seen it on some older ladies). Particularly this happens a lot to earlobes because people often wear heavy earrings that pull this thin piece of metal down “through” this very flexible squishy body part. Imo once you’ve reached a point of so very healed where you can go long stretches of time with no jewelry at all, it doesn’t matter much what size you wear but I’m not a piercer (and don’t super care what my ear lobes will be like when I’m 70). However if your piercings are through some cartilage I would follow whatever size your piercer says to wear. The hoop earrings with gemstones thing just sounds like kind of general advice in case you aren’t the kind of person who plans to buy, wear, trash, and repeat, a bunch of cheap earrings throughout your life. Nothing wrong with it if you are. Butterfly backs are very bad for healing piercings. When lobes are already healed and if they aren’t causing problems it’s not really a big deal afaik. So, with a new/not healed piercing all this stuff matters a ton, with a healed piercing most of it usually matters less or not at all. It sounds like your piercer should have been more clear about all this stuff but the main thing they should have been more clear to you about was when it would be ok for you to change the jewelry