Piercing aftercare, and why doing more is the mistake
Sterile saline twice a day. Unscented soap in the shower. Otherwise leave it alone.
That is the whole routine, and it does not get more elaborate for a rook than for a lobe. Almost everything that goes wrong with a piercing goes wrong because somebody did more than that, not less.
The two minutes, done properly
Wash your hands first. Not a rinse, a proper wash, because your hands are the only thing that will touch the piercing all day and they are the least clean part of this process.
Then saline. Either spray it directly onto the piercing until the area is wet, or soak a clean gauze and hold it against the piercing for a few seconds. Both work. What you are doing is softening and floating away the crust that has dried around the jewelry, not scrubbing anything.
Let it dry, or pat it dry with something disposable. Not a bath towel. A bath towel has been in a bathroom for a week, it is covered in whatever came off everybody else, and it snags on jewelry.
Twice a day. Morning and evening is easiest to remember. More is not better, and we will come back to why.
What sterile saline actually is
Salt water at the same concentration as your body, in a can that has never been opened before you opened it.
The sterile part is the point. A homemade salt solution is the right saltiness and is not sterile, and you are putting it into an open wound. A pressurized can stays sterile from the first spray to the last, which is exactly what a healing piercing needs and exactly what a mixing bowl cannot give you.
Read the ingredients before you buy. It should say sodium chloride and water and nothing else. Anything with added ingredients is a wound-care product doing a job your piercing did not ask for.
The shower is doing most of the work
Warm water running over a piercing is the single best thing that happens to it all day.
Let the water run over it. Use unscented soap on the skin around it if it needs it, and let the lather rinse away rather than working it in. Do not aim the shower head straight at a new piercing from six inches away.
The one thing worth changing is your hair routine. Shampoo, conditioner and dry shampoo all end up on an ear piercing, and dry shampoo in particular is a powder that settles into a healing hole. Rinse the ear last, deliberately, after everything else has gone down the drain.
What not to put on it, and why each one is worse than nothing
Alcohol dries the tissue out and kills the new cells your body is trying to build with. Hydrogen peroxide does the same thing more aggressively and foams while it does it, which people read as working.
Tea tree oil is not gentle because it is natural. It is strong enough to irritate healthy skin, let alone a wound. Antibiotic ointment is thick, it seals the opening rather than letting it breathe, and it traps everything under itself.
Every one of these is a product somebody is selling for piercings, and every one of them will make a healing piercing take longer. If a piercing needs more than saline, it needs a piercer or a doctor, not a stronger bottle.
Do not turn it
This is the instruction that has outlived its own reason, and it is still repeated by people who should know better.
Turning jewelry was advice for a different era, when studs were fitted tight against the skin and there was a genuine fear of them sticking. Everything we fit sits with deliberate room around it, so there is nothing to stick to.
What turning actually does is drag the crust on the outside of the jewelry through the inside of the channel your body is trying to line. It is the single most common way a piercing that was healing perfectly starts hurting again at week five.
Leave it alone. If crust has dried around it, soften it with saline and let it float off. Do not pick it, and do not rotate anything to loosen it.
Sleep, which decides more than the routine does
You cannot control what you do while asleep, and a piercing leaned on for six or seven hours has a much harder job than one that is not.
Sleep on the other side. If you have had both ears done, that is genuinely difficult, and it is a good reason to stagger them rather than do everything in one visit.
A travel pillow works well for ear piercings: the hole in the middle sits over the ear and takes the pressure onto the jaw and the side of the head instead. A folded towel with a dip in it does the same job for nothing.
The first week, and what is normal
Day one it will feel like something happened, because it did. Some heat, some tenderness, and a dull ache more noticeable when you had forgotten about it.
By day three the ache has usually gone and the swelling is at its most obvious. This is where people decide something is wrong. Usually nothing is. Swelling is the body doing its job, and it is exactly why the first bar was fitted slightly long.
Through the first weeks you may see a clear or straw colored fluid drying into a crust. That is normal and it is not pus. Saline, leave the crust, do not pick.
What is not normal is heat that spreads, pain that increases rather than fades, or feeling unwell in yourself. That is a doctor, not a piercer, and not something to research at midnight.
More on irritation and infection
The appointment nobody books
Downsizing, and skipping it undoes a lot of good aftercare.
Your first bar is deliberately long to leave room for swelling. Once that swelling has gone, the extra length starts working against you: a longer post moves more, catches more and leans, and all three are mechanical irritation applied to a wound trying to close around it.
So there is one short appointment a few weeks or months in where the bar comes down to the right length. It takes minutes. It prevents more trouble than every product ever sold for healing a piercing.
Swimming, and the one rule with no exceptions
Not until it is healed. Not a pool, not a lake, not the sea, not a hot tub.
A pool is full of chemicals that irritate an open wound. A lake is full of things that are alive. A hot tub is warm water that has been sitting still, which is the most hospitable environment for bacteria you are likely to get into.
This is the one that ruins summers, so plan around it. A cartilage piercing takes six to twelve months, and a new one in May is a new one you are protecting all summer.
Makeup, hair and everything else that lands on it
Foundation, powder, hairspray, perfume, sunscreen and self tan all end up on a facial piercing, and none of them belong in one.
Work around it rather than over it. If something does get on it, rinse with saline rather than wiping, because wiping drags whatever it is into the channel rather than off it.
Headphones deserve their own line for anyone with a helix, a conch or a flat. Over-ear headphones press on exactly the placements that heal slowest, for hours at a time. Switch to something that does not touch the ear for the first few months, and if that is not possible, tell us before we pierce, because it changes what we would recommend.
Sport, work and the things you cannot avoid
Sweat is not the problem people think it is. It is salt water, and it rinses off.
Contact is the problem. A helmet strap, a mask, a collar, a lanyard, a phone held against the ear, a shoulder bag. Anything that presses or catches will find a new piercing, and it will find it repeatedly.
If your work or your sport puts something against the piercing every day, say so before you get it. Sometimes the answer is a different placement on the same ear that sits out of the way, and that conversation is much better before than after.
When to change the jewelry
Later than you want to, and that is genuinely the answer.
For soft tissue, once there has been no crusting, no tenderness and no discharge for a month. For cartilage, take the long end of the range rather than the short one. A channel that is nearly lined and gets stretched by an early change can take months to recover.
When you do change it, let us do the first one. It costs nothing and it takes a minute, and a first change done badly in a bathroom at eleven at night is one of the more common reasons a healed piercing goes backwards.
Doing more is the mistake
Almost every aftercare problem we see is somebody being conscientious.
Cleaning four times a day instead of two. Adding a second product because the first one seemed slow. Checking it with fingers through the day to see how it is doing. Turning it because someone said to. Picking off crust because it looks untidy.
Every one of those is an intervention in a process that was going fine. A piercing heals the way a graze heals: by being left alone in a reasonably clean environment. Your entire job is saline twice a day and then genuinely nothing.
Oral piercings, which are their own routine
A tongue or a lip does not get saline in the same way, because the inside of your mouth is not skin.
The mouth is a fast-healing environment with a very good blood supply, which is why a tongue settles in about a month rather than the six to twelve a cartilage piercing needs. What it also is, is a place where everything you eat and drink passes over the wound several times a day.
So the routine is a rinse rather than a spray. Plain water or saline after anything you eat, and the outside of a lip piercing gets treated like any other skin piercing. Avoid mouthwash with alcohol in it for the first weeks, for the same reason alcohol is wrong anywhere else.
The practical part people forget is the jewelry itself. A bar in a tongue is fitted long for swelling, exactly like an ear, and until it is shortened it is long enough to catch on teeth. Chewing on it, clicking it against your teeth or playing with it while you think is how a healed tongue piercing ends up chipping a tooth years later.
Alcohol, smoking and the two weeks after
Neither of these is a rule we are going to pretend we can enforce, so here is the honest version of each.
Alcohol thins the blood, which matters most in the first day or two when a piercing is still settling. It is also the most common reason somebody forgets and sleeps on a new piercing, which does more damage than the drink did.
Smoking matters more, and it matters most for oral piercings. It reduces the blood supply to the tissue doing the healing, which is the one thing a piercing genuinely needs. A tongue or lip piercing on a heavy smoker takes noticeably longer, and that is worth knowing before rather than wondering about at week six.
If you think something is wrong
Come in and let us look, whoever pierced it and however long ago.
A piercing sore at week six, a bump beside a helix, jewelry that has sunk in, a stud you cannot get out. Most turn out to be jewelry length or a habit, and both are fixed in minutes. Sometimes the honest answer is that this one is not going to work and taking it out now is kinder than another six months of hoping.
What we will not do is diagnose an infection. If it is hot, if redness is spreading, or if you feel unwell, that is a doctor and we will say so rather than sell you something.
Coming to see us
Piercings & Co., CF Carrefour Laval, unit J012A, 3003 Boulevard le Carrefour, Laval, Quebec H7T 1C7.
Open Monday to Wednesday 10:00 to 19:00, Thursday and Friday 10:00 to 21:00, Saturday 09:00 to 19:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 18:00. Call (450) 682 1777 or write to hello@piercingsandco.com.
Checking a piercing costs nothing and does not need an appointment.
Bottom line
Saline twice a day, unscented soap in the shower, and then leave it completely alone. Sleep on the other side, come back for the downsize, stay out of the water, and do not turn it.
That is the whole of it. The discipline is not in the cleaning, it is in the not touching, and that is the part almost nobody manages.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I clean a new piercing?
Wash your hands, then sterile saline twice a day, either sprayed on until the area is wet or held against it on clean gauze. Unscented soap in the shower on the skin around it. Pat dry with something disposable rather than a bath towel. That is the entire routine.
Should I turn the jewelry?
No. That advice belongs to an era when studs were fitted tight against the skin. Everything we fit has deliberate room around it, so there is nothing to stick to. Turning drags the crust from the outside of the jewelry through the inside of a channel your body is trying to line, and it is one of the most common reasons a piercing that was healing starts hurting again.
Can I use alcohol, peroxide or tea tree oil?
None of them. Alcohol and peroxide dry out and kill the new cells your body is building with. Tea tree oil is strong enough to irritate healthy skin, let alone a wound. Antibiotic ointment seals the opening instead of letting it breathe. If a piercing needs more than saline it needs a piercer or a doctor, not a stronger bottle.
How often should I clean it?
Twice a day, and more is genuinely worse. Almost every aftercare problem we see is somebody being conscientious: cleaning four times a day, adding a second product, checking it with their fingers. A piercing heals by being left alone in a reasonably clean environment.
When can I swim?
Not until it is fully healed, and that means no pool, lake, sea or hot tub. A pool is chemicals in an open wound, a lake is things that are alive, and a hot tub is still warm water. Cartilage takes six to twelve months, so a new one in May is one you are protecting all summer.
Is the crust normal?
Yes. A clear or straw colored fluid that dries into a crust is normal and it is not pus. Soften it with saline and let it float off. Do not pick it and do not turn the jewelry to loosen it. What is not normal is spreading heat, increasing pain, or feeling unwell in yourself, and that is a doctor rather than a piercer.
What about headphones?
Over-ear headphones press on exactly the placements that heal slowest, for hours at a time. If you have a helix, conch or flat, switch to something that does not touch the ear for the first few months. If that is not possible, tell us before we pierce, because it changes what we would recommend.