“Over time, the pigment in tattoos is broken down by the sun’s UV rays,” says Via Savage, a stick-and-poke artist at Dollface Tattoo Brooklyn. “The most commonly-seen effect is fading of the ink, which happens to all tattoos to some extent, but the more frequently your tattoos are exposed to sunlight, the faster that process will occur. Even if you take great care of your tattoo as it’s healing, if you then spend hours in the sun every day without any SPF protection, you’re going to see some serious fading real fast.”
In some cases, the sun damage is so severe, tattoo-owners choose to get the ink removed—which is the specialty of William Kwan, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Beverly Hills, California. Dr. Kwan has been removing tattoos for more than 30 years and is a clinical advisor board chairman at Removery, a laser tattoo removal facility with 150 locations worldwide. “If it’s in an area that gets a lot of sun exposure, it tends to fade quicker, it tends to get dispersed quicker, based on the consistent ultraviolet that area is receiving,” Dr. Kwan tells Glamour.
According to Dr. Kwan, brighter colors are particularly prone to this and should be treated with extra care. “The darker colors are a little bit more resistant [to fading]. If somebody has a really pretty multicolored tattoo, I wanna make sure that they’re protecting that to have the integrity of that tattoo look as good as possible,” he says. “I think the lighter or more vibrant colors tend to fade quicker, so we’re talking about the yellows, the oranges, the different colors.”
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