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Aftercare All 11 guides
Piercing Aftercare
How to clean and care for your new ear, nose or navel piercing, what's normal as it heals, and when to call us or see a doctor.
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Questions? Call us 1-810-360-0915
Caring for your new piercing
Thank you for choosing K Bella. A new piercing is a small wound that heals around your jewelry, from the outside in, so it can look healed well before it is. Keep it clean, keep your hands off it, and give it time. Everyone heals at their own pace, so ask us anything along the way.
What to clean it with
Use a sterile saline spray labeled as a wound wash. The only ingredient listed should be 0.9% sodium chloride (purified water may appear too), with no added moisturizers or antibacterials.
Contact lens solution, saline nasal spray and eye drops are not substitutes. Please don't mix your own salt water either. It's easy to make it too strong, and an overly salty mix dries the piercing and holds back healing.
Skip soap unless your piercer suggests it. If so, choose a gentle soap without dyes or perfume, never an antibacterial one, and rinse it all away.
Your cleaning routine
- Start with clean hands: wash them well before you clean or touch the piercing.
- Spray it with sterile saline 1–3 times a day. For a spot the spray can't reach, hold clean, saline-soaked gauze against it instead.
- Don't twist, spin or turn your jewelry, even while you clean it. Moving it only irritates the piercing.
- Gently ease away any softened crust with clean gauze or a cotton swab.
- A quick rinse with clean water clears any salty film the saline leaves behind.
- Pat dry with clean gauze or a paper towel. Cloth towels can carry germs and catch on jewelry.
What's normal, and when to get help
What's normal
- Early on, a little bleeding, bruising, swelling or soreness.
- While it heals, some color change, itching, and a whitish-yellow fluid that dries to a crust on the jewelry. That fluid is not pus.
- As it heals, the skin can draw in snugly around the jewelry.
- It may seem done on the surface while deeper tissue is still mending, so keep caring for it for the full healing time.
- After healing, the jewelry may feel snug and not slide much. Leave it be.
- Once it's healed, keep washing it as part of your normal shower routine. That stops the normal, sometimes smelly, buildup from collecting.
Call us if
- Your jewelry feels tight, seems too long, or keeps snagging.
- An end or ball is loose or missing.
- An itchy rash appears around it. A different product or jewelry metal often fixes it.
- The jewelry seems to be creeping toward the surface.
- You're asked to remove your jewelry for a medical procedure.
- Something just doesn't look or feel right.
See your doctor if
- You think it may be infected.
- It becomes painful, or redness, swelling or pain is severe or getting worse.
- Heavy, thick discharge that is green, yellow or gray, or that smells bad.
- Red streaks spreading out from the piercing.
- Fever or chills soon after your piercing, or nausea, vomiting, dizziness or confusion.
- A problem lasts a week or keeps getting worse.
- You take steroids or have a chronic health condition, and the piercing is giving you trouble.
While it heals
Do
- Wash your hands before touching your piercing, and otherwise leave it alone.
- Change your sheets and pillowcases often.
- Go to bed in clean, breathable clothes that keep the piercing covered.
- Pick showers over baths, since tubs can hold bacteria. Using the tub anyway? Scrub it first and rinse the piercing afterward.
- Exercise and sweat freely, but skip anything that bumps the piercing, and keep it off gym equipment and mats.
- Now and then, with clean hands, check that your jewelry ends are snug.
Avoid
- Alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, iodine, antibacterial soaps and other harsh cleaners. They damage healing cells.
- Ointments. They block the air a healing piercing needs.
- First-aid sprays like Bactine, anything sold as an ear-piercing care solution, and any product that lists benzalkonium chloride (BZK). They're made for quick first aid, not weeks of daily care, and they can irritate a healing piercing.
- Cleaning more than your routine calls for. It irritates and slows healing.
- Rubbing or pressure from clothes, lots of movement in the area, playing with or twisting your jewelry, and scrubbing hard when you clean. These can leave bumpy, sore scar tissue, let the jewelry shift out of place, and slow healing.
- Mouths, rough play and other people's body fluids. Keep them all away from your piercing until it has healed.
- Pools, hot tubs, lakes and the ocean, unless the piercing is sealed under a waterproof clear film bandage from the pharmacy.
- Getting makeup, lotions, sprays or other personal care products on or near it.
- Charms or anything dangling from your jewelry before you're fully healed.
- Heavy stress, recreational drugs, and too much caffeine, nicotine or alcohol, which can slow healing.
Typical healing times (everyone heals differently)
- 6–8 weeksEar lobe
- 6–12 monthsEar cartilage, including helix, tragus, rook and daith
- 3–12 monthsNose
- 6 months or longerNavel (belly button)
Ear, cartilage and nose piercings
- Try the T-shirt trick: pull a big, clean T-shirt over your pillow. Rotating the pillow and flipping the shirt inside out gives you four clean sides to sleep on.
- Don't sleep on a healing cartilage piercing. The pressure irritates it and can shift its angle. A travel pillow on top of your pillow, with your ear in the opening, helps.
- Keep phones, earbuds, headphones, glasses and helmets clean, and wash hats, scarves and headbands often.
- Mind your piercing when you do your hair, and give your stylist a heads-up, your K Bella stylist included.
- With a nose piercing, keep makeup and skincare clear of it until it's healed.
Navel piercings
Watch your waistband: snug clothes rub and press on a healing navel, so choose looser fits. For sports or close-fitting outfits, cover it with a hard, vented eye patch from the pharmacy, held on with tights or an elastic bandage around your waist rather than tape. For swimming, a waterproof clear film bandage works especially well here.
About your jewelry
- Keep your first jewelry in until you're fully healed. The only reason to swap it sooner is a problem with its fit, shape or metal, and your piercer handles that.
- Many piercings need a shorter post once the first swelling goes down. This is called downsizing, and it keeps longer jewelry from snagging. Ask your piercer if and when yours will need it.
- While you're healing, let your piercer make every jewelry change, downsizing included.
- Even a piercing you've had for years can start closing within minutes of the jewelry coming out, so keep something in it.
- Asked to remove metal jewelry for a medical procedure? Contact us first about a non-metal alternative.
- Once you're healed and choosing new pieces, pick quality body jewelry such as implant-grade titanium or solid, nickel-free 14k or higher gold. Nickel, common in cheap jewelry, often causes allergic reactions.
- Ready to let a piercing go? Take the jewelry out, or ask us to, then keep up your cleaning routine until the opening has fully closed. Usually only a tiny mark is left.
Planning to give blood?
Blood centers may ask you to wait three months after a piercing if it isn't clear that single-use equipment was used. Bring the copy of your piercing record from your visit; it may let you donate without waiting.
