Guide

Permanent Makeup: The Questions to Ask Before You Book

It is a tattoo on your face. Ask accordingly.

Permanent makeup, including microblading, is pigment tattooed into the skin. It is semi-permanent, which means it fades and softens over years rather than washing off. It heals before it settles, it can shift in tone as it fades, and correcting it is a harder job than doing it. Every question below follows from those facts.

Ask to see healed work, not fresh work

Fresh work photographs at its darkest and sharpest, before it has healed. Healed work, photographed months or years later, is what you will actually live with. Ask for healed photographs, and ask for them on skin like yours. This one question does more sorting than any other.

Ask what color it tends to fade toward

Pigment in skin does not simply get lighter as it breaks down. It can shift in tone, so work can age toward a color it did not start as. Ask directly what this pigment does on skin like yours over time. An artist who has been doing this for a while will have seen it and be able to say.

Ask what the healing period involves

There is aftercare, there are things you are told not to do, and the work looks different while it is happening. Ask what the instructions are and how long you are following them, and plan the appointment so that period is not sitting on top of an event.

Ask about the touch-up

Most of this work involves a follow-up appointment once the first pass has healed. Ask whether one is expected, when it happens, and how it is handled, so you know the whole shape of the process before you start it.

Ask what happens if you do not like it

This is the question people skip and later wish they had asked. Correction and removal are specialized work, harder than the original appointment, and not everyone who does the original does the correction. Find out in advance who handles it and what it involves.

Ask about your own health and skin first

Skin conditions, medications, allergies, previous permanent makeup in the same area and recent treatments all matter, and some of them mean this is a conversation for a medical professional rather than a booking. Disclose everything, and expect a serious artist to ask.

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