When you arrive for a session your station is already set: machine bagged, bottles wrapped, ink poured, stencil waiting. It looks effortless. It takes about forty minutes, and it is the part of the job we are strictest about.
Breaking down the last session
Setup begins with teardown. Everything disposable from the previous client goes into the correct bin: needles and cartridges into a sharps container, soiled wrap and gloves into clinical waste collected by a licensed contractor. Nothing is reused and nothing goes into ordinary rubbish.
The chair, armrest, tray, lamp and floor around the station are then wiped with a hospital-grade disinfectant and left wet for the full contact time on the label. Wiping and drying straight away does very little.
Wrapping the station
Every surface an artist might touch during the session is covered with a fresh barrier: the chair, the tray, the machine, the clip cord, the wash bottle, the lamp handle. If a glove touches it, it is wrapped. At the end, the wrap is binned and the surface underneath is disinfected anyway.
Needles and ink
We use single-use sterile cartridges. Each comes in a sealed blister with a lot number and an expiry date, and your artist opens it in front of you. If you do not see that happen, ask. We want you to.
Ink is poured from the bottle into single-use caps. The bottle never comes near the needle, and any ink left in a cap at the end is thrown away.
The autoclave
Most of what we use is disposable, but steel grips and piercing tools are cleaned ultrasonically, bagged and sterilised in an autoclave. Each bag carries an indicator strip that changes colour only when the cycle has reached temperature. Once a month we send a spore test to an outside lab to prove the machine is still killing what it should. The log sits at the front desk and you are welcome to read it.
Your skin
The area is cleaned, shaved with a new razor and cleaned again before the stencil goes on. During the session the artist changes gloves every time they touch something outside the wrapped zone, including their phone.
Why we talk about it
No one chooses a tattoo studio for its waste contract. But a tattoo is thousands of small punctures, and the difference between a good studio and a dangerous one is invisible unless somebody shows you. So ask us anything. An artist who is irritated by hygiene questions is telling you something.