There is no product you can use that will make your piercings heal--what's ultimately doing the healing is your body and its immune system! As such, our recommended piercing aftercare is to create an ideal environment for your body to progress through the stages of puncture wound healing with minimal interruption. Here are a few simple rules to follow:

• DON'T twist, turn, or touch your jewelry, and avoid putting any physical pressure on your piercing. This includes sleeping on it, wearing headphones/hats that compress the piercing. Lastly, avoid snagging the jewelry! You essentially want to keep the jewelry as stationary as possible while it is healing.

• DON'T use harsh chemicals or cleaners such as rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, tea tree oil, Bactine, or Neosporin. These products are not recommended for use in puncture wounds by their manufacturers and can cause more harm than good for your piercing. If shampoo, hair spray, or lotion gets into your piercing, rinse the area well with warm water. A good rule of thumb: if it will sting your eyes, it's going to sting your new piercing! So don't use it.

• DO irrigate the piercing site 1-2x/day by rinsing it under running warm water in the shower, or by using an isotonic/body-neutral sterile saline wound wash spray (0.9% sodium chloride). As you are healing, it will be normal to see discharge/crusties (byproducts of the wound healing process) forming around the exit and entry points of your new piercing. You don't want to pick this off with your fingers, but you also don't want it to build up excessively on your jewelry. As such, thoroughly irrigating the wound and gentlywiping softened crusties away with a new Q-tip is the best way to keep the area clean and will allow the piercing to drain as it heals.

• DO try to keep the piercing dry in between rinses, as excess moisture can impede the wound healing process. If you shower at night, tie your hair back so the piercing is not left wet. As long as the filter on your hair dryer is new, you can blow dry your daith, rook, tragus, forward helix, or navel piercing on a cool air setting, as those nooks and crannies tend to retain moisture. You may also use a Q-tip to gently remove softened crusties post-rinse.

• DO downsize your jewelry once the swelling has subsided (typically after 4-8 weeks). We use a longer piece of jewelry initially in order to accommodate for swelling. Once the swelling has gone down, you don't need all that extra length -- and that extra length can actually cause movement and irritation if you are not careful. Downsized posts are on us, free of charge.

• DO get plenty of sleep, stay hydrated, eat well, and manage your stress levels. These factors absolutely impact your immune system's ability to heal. Even after a full healing period, we recommend wearing jewelry at all times to prevent shrinkage/closure of the piercing channel.

• Remember, it’s all about balance! You do not want to totally ignore your piercing, but you also want to avoid overcleaning your piercing. We want you to think about your piercing as much as you do brushing your teeth: a routine of attending to it twice a day (i.e. seeing if there is discharge/crusties to rinse away, and if there is, gently irrigating the piercing site). Following the dental hygiene analogy: if you brushed your teeth 0x a day, your teeth might start to build up plaque/tartar, like how a neglected piercing will build up crust. But, if you brushed your teeth 5-6x a day, that can also seriously damage your enamel—like how overcleaning can damage the fragile tissue of your piercing channel!

Common healing time frames:

o   Earlobe, septum, eyebrow, lip: 4-6 months

o   Helix, conch, flat, forward helix, faux rook, tragus, nostril, vertical lip placements, earlobe orbital: 6-9 months

o   Rook, daith, nipple, navel, bridge: 9-12 months

o   Industrial, cartilage orbital: 12+ months

o   Keep in mind healing time frames vary person to person! Additionally, healing can be non-linear; we are inserting a fancy piece of metal in an open wound, after all. Things like damage from snags, sleeping on the piercing, chemical irritants, stress, healing multiple piercings, etc. can make the healing time longer.

o   Even after a full healing period, we recommend wearing jewelry at all times to prevent shrinkage or even closure of the piercing channel. Some piercings, like nostril, lip, and nipple piercings, can close very fast even when fully healed; other piercings like septums, earlobes, and navels may stay open. It’s hard to say definitively whether something will stay open, so the safest thing to do is to wear jewelry for as long as you want to keep your piercing!

• Depends on what you want to change your jewelry to! If you just want to change the decorative end of your threadless/threaded stud, we can do that as soon as you come in for your downsize. The beauty of these jewelry systems is that we are simply changing out the decorative end of the jewelry while leaving the post itself in place -- which means that the healing piercing channel is relatively undisturbed. We still recommend having us help you with changes while you are healing, so that we may ensure everything is both properly sterilized and swapped out as gently as possible!

• If you want to change to a seam (continuous) ring, we recommend waiting for your piercing to be fully healed (earlobes: 3-5 months, hard cartilage 6-12 months).

  • Why such a long wait? The shape of a ring can put a lot of pressure on the entry and exit points of your piercing, which - if the piercing is not yet fully healed - can cause major setbacks in your healing process. The movement of a ring (and especially the motion of a seam or hinge sliding through the piercing channel) can also cause excess irritation inside the already fragile piercing channel. It's best to make sure your piercing is fully settled before switching to a ring.

• Even after a full healing period, we recommend wearing jewelry at all times to prevent shrinkage or even closure of the piercing channel.

Fresh piercings typically experience an inflammation period of about 4-8 weeks (this varies person to person); inflammation is one of the stages of wound healing.

To accommodate for this, and to reduce the risk of “embedding” (where the jewelry is too short for the amount of inflammation present, and is subsequently pulled into the tissue), we start with a longer post. With the way our jewelry works, we can swap the length of your wearing surface (e.g. ball- or flat-back post, barbell shaft, etc.) while keeping the decorative endpiece you chose the same.

Once the swelling subsides, your piercing does not need all of that extra length on the jewelry and in fact, if you aren’t super careful, can get snagged more easily on hair, towels, etc. This snagging can cause trauma to the tissue and delay your wound healing.

Additionally, keeping the post too long past the end of the inflammation period can lead to “angle drift” if your cartilage piercing is repeatedly slept on, or pressure is otherwise placed on it through hats, heavy hair, over-ear headphones, etc. For oral piercings, keeping the post too long can lead to dental damage.

Because downsizing is so critical to your piercing’s health, we offer the first downsize free of charge for piercings performed at Rosefinch. For piercings performed elsewhere, or any additional downsize, we waive the jewelry change fee; it’s just the cost of the component being downsized.

How do you know if your piercing is ready for a downsize? When at least 2 millimeters [-] (this much) extra length on your post is visible, without you pushing on the jewelry!

If pressure is continuously placed on a cartilage piercing while it is healing (e.g. from sleeping on it, headphones, heavy hair, masks, etc.), that pressure will cause your jewelry to pivot, and your body will actually heal your piercing channel at a wonky angle.

Please watch this video by Lola Slider for a helpful visual demonstration.

As a piercing changes from perpendicular to angled, the body tries to offset the pressure the jewelry is placing on the tissue by developing irritation bumps. These bumps may progress into permanent scar tissue. This also lengthens your piercing’s healing time substantially, as you now have to heal a longer piercing channel than is necessary.

Once a piercing channel has drifted, there is no way to undo the shift. We would ultimately recommend removal.

If your piercing does manage to heal despite the drift, your jewelry options may be limited; flat pieces will no longer sit flat to your tissue, and rings will not hang evenly from the piercing channel.

The best way to avoid angle drift is prevention: sleeping on your other side, and/or sleeping on a piercing pillow, as well as coming in for your downsize appointment as soon as your inflammation period is over. This is why we offer the first downsize for free on piercings performed at Rosefinch—we care about the long-term health of your piercing!

Products such as Bactine, Neosporin, rubbing alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide are intended for external use only per the manufacturers’ recommendations. A piercing is a puncture wound, so antiseptics are much too harsh for the new, fragile tissue being built within and as part of your piercing channel.

All we recommend is irrigating your piercing with clean, plain water and/or sterile saline wound wash (0.9% sodium chloride).

If you choose to use saline, there’s nothing about the saline that’s making your piercing heal. It is simply a neutral way to rinse your piercing as it heals!

• Piercings are more commonly irritated rather than infected. However, if you do suspect bacterial infection (pain, red streaks emanating from the piercing site, green or smelly discharge, fever, nausea, or vomiting), please see a medical professional as soon as you can.

• Piercings often become irritated in response to some sort of intrinsic or extrinsic health factor(s).

  • Intrinsic factors may include nutritional status, sleep, stress levels, or overall health status. For example, it's not uncommon for piercings to flare up around finals week or a major work deadline.

  • Extrinsic factors affecting wound healing include mechanical stress (like a snag, or sleeping on the piercing), excessive moisture, chemical stress (like the use of oils/creams/ointments), changes in climate, or inappropriate jewelry (like wearing a style or metal not suited for initial piercings).

• We do not recommend applying any cleaners/creams/oils to your piercing when it's irritated or if it develops a bump, as that can actually exacerbate the problem. The best way to soothe an irritated piercing is to figure out what caused the irritation, and eliminate the source -- then the irritation should subside with time.

• We do not recommend removing the jewelry if you want to keep your piercing open! The jewelry is what keeps the piercing channel open with 100% certainty. An irritated piercing will likely close up much faster than a healthy piercing, but collagen shrinks even in healthy, well-established piercings when jewelry is removed. This leads to shrinkage of the piercing channel or sometimes even closure.

• Trying to insert jewelry into a piercing channel that has shrunken down can cause further damage to your piercing. This should only be attempted by a professional piercer.

• We do, however, suggest the use of dry hot compresses 2-3x/day to stimulate immune response if a piercing is flaring up.

• Feel free to make and appointment or send us an email with some photos so we can figure out what's irritating your piercing, and develop a game plan!

You can find a microwaveable gel hot/cold pack at your local pharmacy. There are also a few ways to make one at home! First, cover the piercing with sterile gauze (preferred), fresh paper towel, or clean cloth.

• Microwave a wet paper towel or washcloth for 1-2 minutes and pack it inside a clean Ziploc bag

• Microwave dry rice inside a cloth bag until warm

• The dry heat source should be bearably hot, but not painfully so; if it's too hot, let it cool before applying it to the area. We recommend holding up the dry heat source for 10 minutes, 2-3x a day if a piercing is irritated.

• Heat stimulates blood flow/immune response and encourages drainage. We prefer the use of dry heat rather than soaking the piercing because the latter can actually impede wound healing by causing moisture issues.

• "Increasing the temperature of chronic wounds to 38 °C may help to induce healing by increasing blood flow and improving the availability of oxygen." ("Local warming therapy for treating chronic wounds: A systematic review." Yue et al. 2018)

• We only recommend cold compresses (no ice directly on the piercing) in two situations:

• To manage pain for the first 48 hours after getting pierced. We do not want to delay the inflammation phase of wound healing for too long, however, as that is a necessary step in the wound healing process.

• To manage sudden and unexpected swelling during the healing process. If this happens, please come in for a longer post (“upsize”).

Low/fluctuating temperatures can trigger/exacerbate swelling in both piercings old and new, as well as slow down the healing process overall. It's important to limit the amount of time you spend outside in the cold with your piercings uncovered (i.e. wear a hood or clean, loose scarf). And drink plenty of water to keep your skin well-hydrated!Item description

Healing piercings can close up quite quickly when the jewelry is removed. Even after they are fully healed, certain placements such as nostril or nipple piercings carry a higher risk of shrinking significantly or even closing up completely without jewelry in them for a period of time. Everyone’s body is different, so it is difficult to predict how quickly that might happen, if at all.

To mitigate this risk, we’d recommend wearing a glass retainer during your procedure; they are $12/ea. We are happy to assist with insertion, especially if your piercing is still healing!

Now, keep in mind that glass retainers are not quite as secure as threadless or internally threaded jewelry, so wearing a glass retainer should be considered a temporary thing. We’d recommend reinserting your regular jewelry as soon as you can post-procedure.

We have a specific “Glass Retainer” appointment option on our booking page.