• Tattoo pain volition vary depending on your historic period, sexual practice, and pain threshold.
  • The most painful spots to get a tattoo are your ribs, spine, fingers, and shins.
  • The to the lowest degree painful spots to get a tattoo are your forearms, stomach, and outer thighs.

Getting a tattoo involves an ink-filled needle repeatedly puncturing your skin. Consequently, it's not unusual to wonder how much pain you should await when considering a tattoo.

As it turns out, hurting is a highly subjective experience, and how much discomfort you feel while getting tattoed tin can depend on a couple of factors including your biological sex activity, pain tolerance, and most importantly — the surface area of your body getting tattooed.

Near and least painful spots to get the tattoo

Most of the data on tattoos and pain is anecdotal, simply some general rules employ. The almost painful places to get tattooed are typically bony and accept very picayune fatty covering them, says Gianna Caranfa, a New York-based tattoo creative person.

Alyssa Powell/Insider

Alyssa Powell/Insider

The most painful areas for all people include the:

  • Anxiety
  • Ribs
  • Spine
  • Stomach
  • Fingers
  • Breast
  • Knee
  • Elbow
  • Shin
  • Neck
  • Groin
  • Head and confront
  • The bony part of the ankle

Less painful areas to go tattooed include parts of the body with thicker peel and more than fat, including the:

  • Forearm
  • Hands
  • Shoulder
  • Parts of the dorsum
  • Back of arm
  • Stomach
  • Outer arm
  • Outer thigh

How bad practise tattoos hurt?

There'due south no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to how much pain you'll feel when getting tattooed. Simply if you're wondering what type of pain to look, Caranfa says the experience is comparable to the feeling of a cat scratch or a sunburn.

"Long periods of irritation and tenderness are what make you feel any discomfort," Caranfa says. "The sensation of a tattoo needle is very dull compared to a syringe [and needle], information technology isn't the needle that causes discomfort equally much as information technology is prolonged tenderness of being tattooed."

Importantly, different people will written report varying experiences of pain based on their private nervous systems and pain thresholds, says Channelle Charest, a California-based tattoo artist and Co-founder of tattoo scheduling platform Tatstat.

Other factors that could impact pain during tattooing include:

  • Age: Studies suggest aging decreases your pain sensitivity, significant elderly people might experience less pain when getting tattooed. Researchers have yet to determine why this happens but note that the size of parts of the brain that procedure pain decreases with age.
  • Sexual practice: People who are biologically female person are more than probable to feel greater hurting intensity, a lower pain threshold, and a lower tolerance for induced pain compared to people who are biologically male. Notwithstanding, research is withal emerging.
  • Psychological expectations : If you get into a tattoo expecting it to be an excruciating experience, this might affect how much hurting you actually feel. Studies suggest that people who feel anxious about and "catastrophize" hurting before a procedure often experience higher levels of hurting intensity and distress than people with "neutral" hurting expectations.

Fortunately, nearly of the discomfort you feel while getting tattooed will finish when your tattoo creative person puts downward the tattoo gun.

"The sensation is simply when the needle is in you," Caranfa says, calculation that while it's typical to experience some soreness, swelling, and itchiness in the days after getting tattooed, it's "non debilitating."

Insider's takeaway

Information technology'southward natural to experience nervous nearly pain when getting tattooed, simply in that location are steps y'all can take to prepare yourself and brand the process a more pleasant feel.

"Make certain y'all eat an hour earlier you go, drink plenty of water, and wear comfortable dress," Charest says, and always be chatty and honest with your artist if you need to take a break while getting tattooed.

If you're actually worried nigh pain, you might opt to use a numbing cream. Remember to avoid NSAIDS or drink alcohol prior to being tattooed as they can thin your claret and cause excess bleeding, making information technology harder for the tattoo creative person to exercise their chore.

Lia Tabackman is a freelance journalist covering health and science topics for Insider.com. She tin can be institute on Twitter @LiaTabackman.