If you happen to be Caucasian, you can afford to stop reading now as you’ll be pleased to find out that pretty much every color will work on your skin.
Suffice to say, the problem of color and skin is one that is faced mostly by tan or dark skin tones. What happens with a tattoo is that the ink is not coloring the surface of the skin directly, it is coloring a couple of layers beneath the surface and allowing the skin on top to heal over it in time. As such, you’re actually viewing the ink of your tattoo through the skin itself.
For those with light skin tones, this isn’t a big problem seeing as white skin is transparent and so any color will show through as clear as day. However, for those with dark skin, the pigmentation within your skin will mean that a layer of dark skin grows on top of the ink, thus masking it and hiding it away from sight.
Of course, it does depend how dark exactly your skin is. If you’re only tanned, you’ll find that by using brighter colors, you’re able to let the color shine through your skin anyway. Unfortunately if you really are very dark there are few options that would allow any sort of color to show through, at least for now.
All said and done though, you could still get an incredibly cool tattoo if you have dark skin, you should just steer clear of the colors that many others use. Instead, opt for gray or black ink that would really bring out the best in your skin and show itself off to perfection.
By finding out what colors will work on your skin, you should be able to pick a design that suits those colors, and not waste time looking at designs that simply aren’t going to fit the bill due to your skin tone. After all, who needs them anyway when you could get an exciting tattoo in your own right still!
