What to know before getting multiple ear piercings? In this article, Rosanna will share her experience of getting multiple piercings in a very short period of time. Enjoy.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Hi, I’m Rosanna. Over the last 15 months or so, I’ve gotten eight different piercings. Now my total is 10. I just became kind of obsessed with the look of multiple ear piercings, which I feel like has become pretty popular in recent years.
I always thought that it looked really cool. I remember my best friend in high school, she had a ton of ear piercings, and I thought that she looked badass. But I was always too much of a wimp to go through with doing anything myself.
Now that I have gone through the experience of getting the piercings, I wanted to share my experience because I feel like there are some things that I would have changed about my approach to it.
So some of the things I’m going to talk about are my experiences with actually getting the piercing, as well as healing for each of the different piercings that I have. And then I have some thoughts now that I’ve gone through everything about curation and placement of the piercings because I feel like I could have been a little more thoughtful about it.
I am not incredibly happy with where the placement of mine are, but there’s not really anything I can do about it. But if you’re thinking about going through this process yourself and getting multiple ear piercings, then it’s not too late for you.
I feel like I have some great tips for you. These are going to help ensure that you’re prepared to actually go through the process and that you’re actually happy with the end result. So if that’s something you’re interested in, please keep on reading.
Avoiding Infections & Healing Properly
The first thing that I want to talk about is just generally avoiding infection as well as making sure that your piercings heal properly. I did have one of my piercings get infected, so I’ll talk about that and what I did, as well as what I would not do in the future so that you don’t do that yourself.
1. Pick A Side
The first tip that I have in this general area is to pick a side that you want to start with for your first piercings.
When your piercings are healing, you cannot sleep on them. The reason for that is because when you are sleeping on them, you are essentially cutting off your piercing from any air circulation, and that’s really important for your piercing to heal and for your skin to develop scar tissue.
So, I did not think about this because I was somewhat impulsive when I got my first cartilage piercing.
The first cartilage piercing that I got was my tragus piercing. The tragus is the little flap of skin that is kind of in the middle of your ear.
I’m generally a back sleeper, but when I do sleep on my side, I do really like to sleep on my left side, and that is exactly where that piercing is.
So, I kind of had to train my body to enjoy sleeping on my right side. If you prefer sleeping on one side versus the other, then it’s something to really consider because some piercings take a long time to heal, and you will not be able to sleep on them.
I will say that there are piercing pillows that you could invest in. I myself have not tried them, so I cannot vouch for them.
But these pillows essentially have a space in the pillow for you to put your ear in so that there is air circulation where your ear is, and so you’re not putting your ear directly on the pillow. But after you get your piercing, though, I would still probably not even sleep on it or risk it at all.
2. Leave Your Piercings Alone
The next tip that I have here is to make sure that your piercing is healing fine. I had no problems, and I was an idiot and I cleaned the back of it with my fingernail. I had not cleaned my hands, and I just felt like touching it because it was a little bit itchy.
And after that, my piercing was crusty, it was oozing, and it was really bad. It was like that for months. It was so bad. I kept trying to clean it with the cleaning solution that I got from my piercer, but it just kept coming back.
I eventually had to go to my piercer and ask them what to do, and they eventually told me to use a salt soak. So, I bought a salt solution from them, and that did help.
Learn more about piercing aftercare mistakes.
3. Find Out What To Expect From The Healing Process
This brings me to my next point, which is that you should invest the time and energy into figuring out exactly how to heal your piercings, and how long they’re going to take to heal. Just make sure that you’re prepared and have the materials that you need in order to follow that process.
So, what I did not do, and what I really wish that I did do, was literally sit down with my piercer and talk to them about what I wanted, like the piercings that I wanted, and ask them exactly what to expect from the healing process, how long it’s going to take, and any problems that could arise and how to solve those problems.
I think I went into it a little bit overly confident because I thought that all I had to do was use the cleaning solution that I bought, and that was pretty much it. I mean, my piercer gave me a little bit of information upfront, but I just kind of said, “Oh, I know, you know, I’m good.” And that was a mistake.
4. Follow Advice To A Tee
You also should make sure that you follow this advice to a tee. I’ll give you another story.
I have a few different cartilage piercings. Those three cartilage piercings, put a long bar initially when they pierce you, and that is to account for the swelling.
My tragus piercing did not swell that much, but this piercing right up here, my ear was so swollen. It was pretty big. My piercer warned me that would happen, and they said that it would go down.
And then after a couple of months, they told me that I need to come in to have the bar shortened. And the reason to shorten the bar is once the swelling goes down, there’s a bar just sticking out the back of your ear, and that could get caught on your hair when you’re putting on face masks.
It’s like right in the danger zone. I was always getting my mask caught in it, and that would irritate the piercing and pull on the bar. And for whatever reason, I just didn’t go in to shorten the bars, and that was such a dumb mistake because I feel like my piercings took way longer to heal than they really needed to because they were constantly getting caught on stuff.
The order that I got these piercings it is I got this one first, and then five months later, I got this one, and then three months after this one, I got the conch piercing in here. I got the bar shortened all at once, and so that meant that for my tragus piercing right here, I was waiting almost a year in order to shorten the bar. And this piercing was always irritating. It was always like was just constantly needing to clean it.
And once I shortened that bar and once I started to consistently do salt soaks and just take better care of it, I felt like it healed pretty rapidly. So, take the instructions seriously. I really wish that I did.
I really thought, which is a really dumb thing, that piercings were easy to heal because they’re just small punctures in your skin. It’s not a big deal. But it’s really, you’re introducing trauma and real wounds to your skin, and the cartilage, especially, that part of your body doesn’t get that much blood.
And so, they take a lot longer to heal. So, do what your piercer tells you, and you’ll have a much better time.
5. Advise Others To Be Careful Around Your New Piercing
A final tip in this particular part of this article is if you’re doing something like getting a haircut, make sure to tell your stylist that you have healed piercings because that could totally irritate your piercings and possibly give you an infection if they are touching it when they’re shampooing your hair.
I didn’t do that for a number of haircuts, and I remember I would dread going to get my hair cut because my piercings would be like throbbing afterward.
My hair’s pretty long, and so the stylists, when they’re washing my hair, they’re not necessarily thinking about being careful with my piercings because they don’t know how fresh the piercings are. They’re really just trying to do their job and wash my hair.
And so, bubbles get into the piercing, and they would constantly knock on this one and this one, in particular, and then they would always get irritated. But I promise you, your stylist is going to be super thankful that you just tell them, and then they’ll be careful, and it’s better for everyone.
How To Curate Your Ear
The next part of the article is all about aesthetics and curation.
Essentially, how you can ensure that you are designing your ear piercings in a way that is going to be flattering for you?
So, my piercings, I feel like I would do differently now that they are all in my ear, and I wish that I had gone through some sort of brainstorming process or really thought it through before I actually started to get the piercings because now I can’t really go back.
I’ll show you my piercings so you can get a good look.
I have six in my left ear, and I have four in my right ear. I have a daith piercing right in the center, and that is my absolute favorite piercing.
My approach to getting piercings, which I don’t really recommend, is I looked at what different piercings were and the different placements where you could have piercings in your ears.
And I essentially picked the ones that I thought looked cool and sounded like they didn’t hurt that much, and I would just kind of go with getting that piercing and not necessarily think that much about how all the piercings were going to be balanced with one another.
So, I’ll tell you a few things that I learned a little bit too late that would have absolutely helped me figure out which piercings to start with and even which piercings to end with because I feel like looking back on it, I probably would only have gotten a few piercings, just thinking about what I know now would probably look best on me and look the most balanced.
1. Tailor Your Piercings To Your Unique Ear
First and foremost, every person’s ear is different and unique to them. For some reason, I did not really think about that, and I would look at pictures online and think, “Oh, that person’s daith piercing looks really great,” for example.
Most pictures online of daith piercings, people having very large circular earrings inside of their daith piercings, and that is what I envisioned for myself. What I did not think about, and what I should have done, is consult my piercer to show her what I wanted before I committed to it and actually went in and got the piercing.
I did not think that my ear was actually too small to get that kind of piercing. When you get a daith piercing, your piercer will evaluate your ear and determine if you can do one of three things.
One is to get the larger earring, the second is to get the smaller earring that fits in my ear, and the third option is to get just a curved option where there are two balls at the end. It’s not going to be an enclosed circle, and I did not know that.
And my ear is small enough that I possibly would have had to do the third option, which is not an enclosed circle, and that’s not the look that I was necessarily going for. I got super lucky that my ear can accommodate this smaller circle because I really wanted a circle.
What I really should have done upfront is to just consult my piercer and tell her what I wanted. If she had told me, “Hey, you actually cannot get that enclosed circle in that particular part of your ear,” then I would have had to recalibrate and think about a different curation and different piercings that I would have gotten.
So here’s what I would recommend. I would recommend looking at the different kinds of piercings that you can get and absolutely looking at pictures online for inspiration.
And once you’ve made your selections, bring your ideas to your piercer. Tell them what you want and ask them if they think that’s going to work for you.
And if you’re comfortable, ask them for their opinion about what they think is going to look best on you because they look at ears all day. They do this all day. They probably have a pretty good idea of what ratios of piercings look good on people and the different kinds of piercings that are going to look good on people.
2. Find The Right Balance
You also really need to think about balance and how your piercings are going to look together. This is way more important than I initially thought because, originally, I had this piercing when I was a teenager, and then I got these two piercings here and then my tragus, and it looked off-balance for some reason to me.
I couldn’t really put my finger on it. But what I read online is that when you’re thinking about your curation, a three-two ratio is a really nice balance on most ears. What that means is that in the upper part of your ear and the lower part of your ear, they should be offset by one.
So if I have three piercings up here, then I could have two down here, or if I have three here, then I could have two up here. And I think what was throwing me off when I would look at my ear, when I only had my tragus and these three piercings here, was that the tragus is in the center of my face of my ear, and then the three down here, and there was nothing up here. It really did feel a little bit off.
There’s also this element of subjectivity, of course. Like, you can do whatever you want with your ear. But these are, I think, really important guidelines to think about. What you’re doing is permanent. I mean, you could take them out and then restart, but the process takes so long, healing takes so long that you probably just want to avoid having to do that.
So what I would have done if I had known about that three-to-two ratio rule initially upfront before I ever started getting piercings is I would start to look at different piercings online and think about which ones I really wanted.
Then I would literally take a picture of my ear and probably just photoshop different piercings on it to see what that ratio looks like and if it feels balanced to me. And if it doesn’t, then I would adjust my choices accordingly. And that’s what I would recommend to you.
Different piercings on different places in my ear, just to see what they might look like and whether everything felt balanced to me.
3. Commit To A Cohesive Aesthetic
The final tip that I have here, which I think is super important, is to actually think about the overall look that you want when you have all of your piercings together.
What I mean is, is there a particular metal that you like? Do you want everything to be silver or gold? You should think about what size earrings you want because that’s a whole other thing. You want your earrings to look balanced.
I personally think that this is especially important when you’re healing your piercings because you can’t take your earrings out once they are put in by your piercer. You need to leave them in for a certain amount of time, so you better like what they look like.
I did not think about this whatsoever when I started to get my piercings, so I felt like my earrings looked very imbalanced when I first started to get piercings, and I got tired of them very quickly. But there was absolutely nothing that I could do.
What I did, and I’ll try and procure a picture somewhere and put it up on the screen so you can see, was I did not think about the metals that I would have preferred, and so I had both silver and gold earrings that were all different sizes.
I had one pretty large circular opal earring that was in my tragus when I initially got it, and then this earring is still the original earring from when I first got this piercing, and it’s very tiny, very minimal.
So that was completely imbalanced. What I have here is probably half the size of the earring that used to be there, this is a lot smaller now, and I feel like it’s a lot more balanced. But before, I started to detest it because I felt like the eye was just so drawn to the tragus, and nobody would ever look at that because it was just hiding.
There’s a bit of a science to it all, and if you look online and do a little bit of research, you’ll see that there are different curations that people have figured out look best.
Obviously, pick whatever works best for you or what you like. But I think I would have loved to have known that a little bit earlier, so that I could do a little research upfront and figure out, “Okay, I like this particular metal. I’m just going to stick to that kind of metal. What kind of sizing looks best in each of the different piercings? How is everything going to work well together?”
That way, I wouldn’t be stuck in a position like I was, where for months, I just wanted to rip my earrings out because I was so tired of the way they looked. What I’ve done now is I picked silver. I think that I’m just a silver girl.
So this earring here, I took out the opal. That was an incredibly stressful and difficult process, by the way. But if you have a tragus or plan on getting the tragus and you want to change the earrings, go to your piercer to do it. Do not do it yourself because I did it myself, and I was essentially just poking around for hours, and it was painful.
But anyway, now I have a silver earring there, and then I have these two silver balls. Same on this side, silver. The earring in there is silver. I think that everything is a lot more cohesive. These earrings never come out; I just leave them there.
I feel like they work well for kind of every day. But anyway, I would have made my life a lot easier if I had just thought about that upfront. Thought about, “Okay, what do I want? I want silver. I want a minimal look.”
Conclusion
One, I’m just going to stick to that and use that as my roadmap. I recommend that to you. So I hope that you enjoyed this article about what to know before getting multiple ear piercings and found these tips helpful. There’s a lot more that I could have touched on, but just for me, these were the key things that I think I made mistakes with.
I really just wanted to put that out there because I myself had trouble finding these tips on my own. So maybe I caught you at a good time before you’re getting your ears pierced. Hopefully, now with these tips, you’re able to decide what’s right for you, and you are prepared to take care of everything so you can heal adequately.
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