How to Minimize the Appearance of Piercing Scars

Not everyone who gets a piercing will be left with a piercing scar. Some people's bodies will heal more effectively than others, which will stop piercing scars from showing up.

But unfortunately, it isn't all that uncommon for people to experience scarring in the aftermath of piercings. This will be especially true for those who get something other than an ear piercing. About one-third of those who get body parts other than ears pierced go through complications, and some of them lead to piercing scars.

If you find yourself dealing with a nose piercing scar, a lip piercing scar, a scar from an eyebrow piercing, or even an ear piercing scar, you should aim to do something about it fast. You should be able to minimize the appearance of piercing scars by taking the right approach to treating them.

We've put together a guide on how to handle piercing scars. Check it out below and put it to good use ASAP so that you don't have to walk around with these scars for too long.

Table of Contents

I. What Are Piercing Scars?

II. How Can You Avoid Piercing Scars?

III. Why Do Some People Get Piercing Scars?

IV. What Are the Different Types of Piercing Scars?

V. How Can You Minimize Hypertrophic Piercing Scars?

VI. How Can You Minimize Atrophic Piercing Scars?

VII. What About Keloid Scars?

VIII. What If Piercing Scars Don't Respond to Treatments?

What Are Piercing Scars?

Piercing scars are scars that can show up on the surface of your skin at some point after you get a body part pierced. In some cases, these scars will appear when you still have this body part pierced. In other instances, they'll pop up when you make the decision to remove a piercing from a body part.

Either way, you aren't going to want to have to live with piercing scars. Even though these scars aren't going to be painful for most people, they can be unsightly, and they can also make you wish you hadn't gone through with getting piercings done in the first place.

There is no guarantee that you'll be able to remove piercing scars from your skin. But with just a little bit of effort on your part, you might be able to do away with these scars for good. At the very least, you should be able to minimize their appearances and make it difficult and sometimes even impossible for others to see them.

How Can You Avoid Piercing Scars?

If you don't want to have to worry about dealing with piercing scars down the line, you might be able to take steps that will help you steer clear of them. Caring for a piercing right after you get it might help you to avoid piercing scars altogether.

Every individual type of piercing is going to call for a different type of care. You should ask the piercing studio that you use to get a piercing to provide you with instructions on caring for a piercing and follow them to a T.

Generally speaking, caring for a piercing is going to involve cleaning the area around it and twisting it around from time to time. You might also need to apply special creams to certain types of piercings or even just stick ice on them to promote the healing process.

Whatever the case, you might be able to stop piercing scars in their tracks by committing to taking good care of new piercings. It will work wonders for your skin and prevent piercing scars from rearing their ugly heads in many instances.

Why Do Some People Get Piercing Scars?

Most people's bodies are excellent when it comes to healing themselves. They go into overdrive when people get piercings and heal the area around them so that no scarring takes place.

There are, however, some people who will still get piercing scars no matter how hard they work to take care of new piercings. Their bodies won't heal like they should for one reason or another, and it'll leave them with piercing scars in the end.

If you fall into this category, you should try not to beat yourself up too much over it. Some people will wonder if they could have prevented piercing scars by cleaning their new piercings more often or by taking additional steps to stop scarring from happening.

But the simple fact is that some people are going to get piercing scars regardless of how diligent they are about cleaning new piercings. You should take solace in knowing that you aren't alone and then start working towards minimizing the appearance of piercing scars.

What Are the Different Types of Piercing Scars?

If you start to see scarring taking place in the area surrounding a new piercing or if you spot a scar starting to appear in the area where you used to have a piercing, you should spring into action as soon as you can to do something about it. To begin, you'll need to identify which type of piercing scar it is since this will have an impact on the treatment steps you'll have to take.

Hypertrophic piercing scars and atrophic piercing scars are the two most common types of piercing scars around. Let's learn more about them before you dive headfirst into trying to get them to go away.

Hypertrophic Piercing Scars

After you get a piercing, your body will sense that damage has been done to your skin, and it'll work on trying to heal it right away. It'll do this by sending collagen in the direction of your piercing.

In most cases, this will be a good thing since the collagen will help promote healing. But there are times when your body might produce too much collagen at once. This will sometimes result in what's called a hypertrophic piercing scar.

Hypertrophic piercing scars tend to have the following qualities:

• They'll be slightly raised from your skin
• They'll often be under 4 millimeters long
• They'll feel hard when you touch them
• They'll be red at first before lightening over time

Hypertrophic piercing scars are typically easier to fix than atrophic piercing scars. But you will still need to put some effort in to make them disappear for good.

Atrophic Piercing Scars

While hypertrophic piercing scars are raised and very prominent because of this, atrophic piercing scars look like small pockmarks on your skin. They will usually form when something stops the healing process from playing out after you get a new piercing.

But they can also form if your body rejected a piercing for some reason or if you opted to remove a piercing before healing was able to take place.

Atrophic piercing scars often have these qualities:

• They'll look like a divot in your skin next to where a piercing was
• They'll be the same color as your skin without any permanent discoloration
• They'll require professional treatment in most cases since they'll come from damage being done under your skin

Although it can be tricky trying to minimize the appearance of atrophic piercing scars, it is possible to do it. You're just going to need to try some different things until you're able to land on one that works.

How Can You Minimize Hypertrophic Piercing Scars?

Do you have hypertrophic piercing scars that are taking a toll on the appearance of your skin? You'll be happy to hear that there are so many things you can try to make these scars disappear.

We're going to touch on some of the simplest ways to stop hypertrophic piercing scars in their tracks. Discover more about them and then try them out to see what kinds of results you're able to get.

Apply Scar Ointments to Hypertrophic Piercing Scars

The first thing you can do to make hypertrophic piercing scars go away is to apply special scar ointments to them. Many of these ointments will work wonders on this type of piercing scar.

You'll just want to be careful about not applying scar ointments to new piercings too soon. You might end up irritating a new piercing if you start putting a scar ointment on a piercing earlier than you should.

The piercer who provides you with a new piercing should be able to tell you when you can start applying scar ointments. They can also inspect a piercing that you have to see whether it has healed enough for you to start putting a scar ointment on it.

You should know that there are bacterial infections that can look like hypertrophic piercing scars in some cases. They aren't going to respond to scar ointments at all.

So if you have what looks like a scar near a new piercing, you'll want to ask your piercer about it so that they can confirm that it is, in fact, a scar and not an infection that will require a different treatment.

Try Tea Tree Oil on Hypertrophic Piercing Scars

Would you prefer to take an all-natural approach to healing hypertrophic piercing scars? Then you can skip using a scar ointment and try using tea tree oil on a piercing scar instead.

Just like with using scar ointments, though, you should steer clear of putting tea tree oil on hypertrophic piercing scars too soon. You should also avoid using them if you suspect you might have something like a bacterial infection since tea tree oil isn't going to do much for it.

Put Pressure on Hypertrophic Piercing Scars

As we alluded to earlier, most hypertrophic piercing scars appear when your body produces too much collagen in an attempt to heal piercings. With this in mind, putting pressure on this type of piercing scar might do the trick when it comes to minimizing the appearance of a piercing scar.

Some piercers might actually suggest discs that you can wear along with jewelry to apply pressure to hypertrophic piercing scars. These discs can help to make hypertrophic piercing scars disappear in many cases.

You will, of course, want to be careful about applying too much pressure to hypertrophic piercing scars. You might do more harm than good if you increase the pressure that you put on these scars to the wrong level.

Your piercer should be able to provide you with more information on how to use this method to lighten the overall appearance of hypertrophic piercing scars.

Give Hypertrophic Piercing Scars Time to Heal

When you first see a hypertrophic piercing scar show up on your skin, you might be in a big rush to make it disappear. But the truth is that the easiest way to make it a distant memory might be by giving your body the time it needs to heal it.

Many hypertrophic piercing scars will lighten up dramatically and go away almost completely on their own within about 12 months of you getting a piercing. Staying patient might be the best way you can minimize the appearance of a piercing scar that's sitting on the surface of your skin.

Talk to Your Doctor About Treating Hypertrophic Piercing Scars

If you give a hypertrophic piercing scar more than a year to heal and it still looks just as bad as when it first showed up, you might have to take more drastic measures to eliminate it. Talking to your doctor about treating a hypertrophic piercing scar might be the only way to minimize its appearance.

Your doctor might be able to give you a prescription for a stronger scar ointment than the ones you're able to buy in stores. They might also suggest that you consider having laser treatments done, and they might even go as far as to tell you that a minor surgery would be your best option.

Including your doctor in the mix when you're trying to heal a hypertrophic piercing scar might produce the kind of results you're looking for.

How Can You Minimize Atrophic Piercing Scars?

Of the two main types of piercing scars, atrophic piercing scars are the ones that many people despise most. They can be hard to hide, and unlike hypertrophic piercing scars, they're not going to get any less noticeable over time.

Because of these things, you're going to have to work a lot harder to minimize the appearance of atrophic piercing scars. You'll often need to speak with either your doctor or a dermatologist to find a solution to this particular problem. See what some of the best options for treating atrophic piercing scars will be.

Use Fillers to Eliminate Atrophic Piercing Scars

The good news for those with atrophic piercing scars is that there is a reliable way to minimize them almost overnight if you'd like. You can have a dermatologist inject fillers into these scars to make them go away immediately.

The bad news is that using fillers is typically not going to be a long-term solution for those with atrophic piercing scars. You will need to have fillers put into your scars on a regular basis to stop them from popping back up again.

Using fillers can also be expensive in many instances. It isn't out of the ordinary for them to cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $1,000 depending on the severity of these scars.

You'll need to give some thought to whether you're willing to spend time and money getting rid of atrophic piercing scars in this way.

See If Chemical Peels Help With Atrophic Piercing Scars

If you only have one or two very small atrophic piercing scars, you might not want to go through with having chemical peels done to try to heal them. But if you have more extensive scarring going on, that will be when you'll want to consider giving chemical peels a try.

Chemical peels will remove several damaged layers of your skin at a time. In doing so, they can help to make atrophic piercing scars disappear over time.

The only downside to using chemical peels for atrophic piercing scars is that they can take a long time to heal. You might have to spend weeks on end waiting for your skin to heal following chemical peels, and you might also have to live with skin that will look less than ideal during this time.

If you feel comfortable with the idea of going through chemical peels and the healing process that will come along with it, you're welcome to give them a try. You should just be aware of what you'll be walking into before you put chemical peels to the test.

Go Through Skin Needling or Laser Treatments for Atrophic Piercing Scars

Although there are some subtle differences between skin needling and laser treatments, both can help to heal atrophic piercing scars by poking tiny holes in your skin that will encourage your body to produce collagen to heal them. This collagen can be used to heal both the tiny holes that were created by these treatments as well as the atrophic piercing scars that you have.

More often than not, you will need to go through a series of skin needling or laser treatments to get lasting results. You might also have to deal with some pain when you're going through these types of procedures while trying to heal atrophic piercing scars.

But of all the treatment methods for atrophic piercing scars listed here, these ones will usually produce the longest-lasting results. You might be able to do away with your piercing scars forever by undergoing these treatments over time.

What About Keloid Scars?

Most people who suffer from piercing scars will be diagnosed with either hypertrophic or atrophic scars. But it's worth noting that you can also get what are called keloid scars from piercings.

Keloid scars are very thick scars that will show up on your skin when your body produces too much scar tissue at one time. This scar tissue will leave you with a big, often ugly keloid scar in the area surrounding a piercing.

Unlike hypertrophic scars, keloid scars aren't going to fade on their own. They're going to stay where they are unless you do something to treat them.

Fortunately, keloid scars won't be dangerous to your health. But they might make you feel self-conscious since they'll stand out more than other piercing scars.

You'll need to work with your doctor to come up with a treatment plan for them. This treatment plan might involve using everything from corticosteroid cream on keloid scars to undergoing surgery on them.

What If Piercing Scars Don't Respond to Treatments?

Some piercing scars aren't going to respond to treatments like you might want them to. They'll continue to have an impact on the appearance of your skin even when you make every attempt to get rid of them.

If you find yourself in this position, you should continue to speak with medical specialists about how to promote healing for your skin. You might also want to talk to those within the piercing world to see what kinds of solutions they can offer up.

There is bound to be something that will work when you're trying to eradicate piercing scars. You might just need to get extra creative and try as many things as you can to heal your skin. It'll be well worth it in the end when you're able to minimize the appearance of piercing scars once and for all.

Our High-Quality Jewelry Can Reduce the Chances of Piercing Scars

As you've seen here, piercing scars can be a real pain even though they won't cause much actual pain. It can be difficult trying to get piercing scars to go away and stay away for good.

One way you might be able to stop piercing scars from showing up from the start is by using high-quality jewelry to have your body parts pierced. You should also continue to use great jewelry in your piercings for life.

Body Pierce Jewelry can provide you with all the jewelry you'll need for ear and body piercings. Begin shopping around for the best jewelry in the business today.