Tattoo Placement Guide: Where to Get Your First Tattoo

Placement is the decision most first-timers underweight. The design is yours; the body region decides how visible it is, how much it hurts, how it ages, and whether the style you picked will even read at that size in that spot.

How do you weigh visibility vs. discretion when choosing placement?

Decide first whether the tattoo should be visible in a short-sleeve shirt, hidden under any clothing, or somewhere in between. That single call eliminates most of the body and turns placement from an open question into a short list.

Visibility is a career and lifestyle decision before it is an aesthetic one. Forearms, hands, neck, and face are visible in almost any context — they will be in every work photo, every video call, every passport check. The upper arm, thigh, ribs, back, and chest are private by default and only appear when you choose them to. Wrists and ankles sit in the middle: covered by a watch or sock, exposed in a t-shirt.

Start by listing the three contexts where the tattoo will most often live — your job, your gym, your beach holiday — and ask which of those you want it in. A tattoo you have to hide in two of three contexts is going to wear on you faster than the design itself ages.

The second consideration is reversibility of decision. Hand and neck tattoos are sometimes called "job stoppers" for a reason: they remove options you may not know you want yet. Most experienced artists will ask a first-timer to sequence the planning decisions and put visibility last, not first — because once you are sure of the design and the size, the placement that fits your actual life often picks itself.

Use a virtual tattoo try on to preview placement before booking. Seeing the design at real scale on your own arm or ribs is the single fastest way to know whether "visible" still feels right when it is no longer hypothetical.

One last lens: the people you spend time with. A tattoo that is private at work may be visible every day at home, at the gym, or in a relationship. Visibility is not binary; it is a spectrum that varies by setting. The forearm-versus-upper-arm decision often comes down to which version of yourself you want the tattoo to be part of by default — the public one or the one only close people see. There is no wrong answer, but the question is worth asking before the needle does.

Which body areas hurt most and least for a tattoo?

Pain tracks nerve density and how close the needle gets to bone. Ribs, sternum, spine, hands, feet, and inner upper arm hurt the most. Outer thigh, outer upper arm, calf, and forearm are the most tolerable.

Pain is real, but it is also short-lived and ranks lower in the long-term experience of a tattoo than most first-timers expect. Still, knowing the map matters, because a six-hour rib session is a different commitment than a two-hour forearm session.

The highest-pain regions share three features: thin skin, dense nerve endings, and bone directly beneath. Ribs and sternum check all three. Hands, feet, the inner ankle, and the spine are similar. The inner bicep and the back of the knee hurt because the skin is thin and the area is rich in nerves, even though there is no bone underneath. A peer-reviewed overview of dermal innervation patterns is available via the NCBI StatPearls anatomy reference if you want the underlying physiology.

The lowest-pain regions are the meaty, well-padded parts of the body: outer thigh, outer upper arm, calf, and the fleshy part of the forearm. These also happen to be the regions most artists recommend for first tattoos, which is not a coincidence — they let you concentrate on the experience of being tattooed rather than on enduring it.

Pain tolerance is personal and partly a function of sleep, food, and hydration in the 24 hours before the appointment. It is rarely the deciding factor in placement, but if you are nervous, choosing a forearm or outer-thigh spot for your first tattoo removes one variable from a day that has plenty of others.

Duration matters as much as intensity. A two-hour session on the ribs is bearable for most people; a six-hour session on the same region tests almost everyone. If you have a design in mind that will take five hours or more, the placement decision should factor in whether you can sit still through the back half of the session, not just whether the first thirty minutes feel manageable. Many artists will split long pieces in high-pain regions across two appointments specifically for this reason.

How does placement affect how a tattoo ages over time?

Skin that moves, stretches, or sees a lot of sun ages tattoos faster. Hands, feet, inner lip, and the sides of fingers blur fastest; outer thigh, upper arm, back, and chest hold detail longest.

A tattoo ages in two ways: the ink itself fades and migrates, and the skin around it changes shape. Both are heavily influenced by where on the body you put the design.

Friction is the first enemy. Hands, the sides of fingers, the tops of feet, and the inner lip are in constant contact with surfaces, shoes, or other skin, and they shed and regenerate more aggressively than the rest of the body. Fine lines in those regions blur within a few years and often need touch-ups by year five. Sun is the second enemy: any exposed area without consistent SPF will lose contrast steadily over a decade, and black ink eventually shifts toward a blue-grey.

Movement and stretching are the third factor. Areas that flex significantly — the inner elbow, the back of the knee, the lower abdomen — can distort a tattoo's geometry, especially if your body composition changes. Pregnancy, significant weight change, and muscle gain affect placement decisions more than most first-timers consider.

The regions that age best are the ones that stay relatively still, stay covered, and have thicker skin: the outer upper arm, outer thigh, upper back, and chest. A tattoo placed there with proper aftercare will hold detail for decades. If you want a piece with fine linework or small text, those four regions are the safe bet. If you love your hands and accept that the tattoo will need maintenance, that is also a legitimate choice — just make it with eyes open.

Ink colour interacts with placement too. Black holds longest in any region; reds and yellows fade fastest, especially in sun-exposed areas; pastels and soft watercolour palettes age unevenly almost everywhere. If you want colour to last on a forearm or hand, double the SPF discipline and expect a touch-up around year seven. If you want a colour piece that ages with minimal intervention, put it somewhere that almost never sees direct sun — upper back, chest, inner upper arm.

What sizes and styles flatter each body region?

Size should follow the natural shape of the region, not fight it. Long thin designs suit forearms and spines; round designs suit shoulders and thighs; ribs and ribs-to-hip favour vertical or curved compositions.

Every body region has a natural "frame" — a shape it wants to fill. Forearms, calves, and spines are long rectangles and reward vertical compositions: snakes, daggers, columns of text, botanical stems. Shoulders and outer thighs are roughly circular and suit mandalas, roses, animals curled into themselves, and other contained compositions. Ribs and the ribs-to-hip area are long and curved and call for designs that follow the body's line — flowing florals, dragons, scripts that wrap.

Style interacts with region in ways that are easy to underestimate. Fine-line and single-needle work needs forgiving skin and minimal movement to age well, which is why so much of it lives on the forearm or upper arm. Bold traditional and neo-traditional handle distortion better and survive on regions like the thigh or ribs even as the body changes. Heavy blackwork demands real estate — it overwhelms small areas and starts to read on a forearm, sleeve, or back panel.

Size is the trap most first-timers fall into. A wrist tattoo printed at 4 cm on paper looks tiny on the actual wrist; the same design at 9 cm looks balanced. Use the tattoo size guide to match design size to body part before booking, and check wrist-specific design considerations if that is the region you have in mind.

The shortcut is to stop choosing in the abstract. Put the actual design on the actual region at the actual size. Then judge.

One more region-specific note: symmetry. The chest, sternum, lower back, and the centre of the spine all suit symmetrical compositions because the body itself is roughly symmetrical along the midline. Asymmetric designs in those regions tend to look misplaced no matter how good the artwork is. Conversely, the outer thigh, outer arm, and shoulder cap read better with asymmetric or flowing compositions because they curve away from the midline. Matching design symmetry to body symmetry is one of those quiet decisions that separates tattoos that look intentional from tattoos that look stuck on.

Body region × pain × ageing × visibility × style fit

palmar-side placement — Tattoos placed on the inside surface of the hand, fingers, or wrist — the palm-facing side. The skin there is thicker and sheds more aggressively, so palmar-side ink typically blurs and fades faster than any other region.