Here’s a quick primer or reference sheet looking at various tattoo removal methods, from professional services to unrecommended over the counter, at home products. This list is not inclusive of all possible methods and only provides the average or suggested cost. Prices of course vary by location and by individual clinics, who are all able to set their own prices for their services. Use this list to get a ball park idea of how much treatments for tattoo removal cost.

Professional Tattoo Removal Services and Methods

Tattoo Removal Method: Laser Tattoo Removal
Pricing Stucture: Priced By Individual Laser Treatments.
Average Number of Treatments to Remove a Tattoo: 5-10
Cost Of Each Laser Treatment: $250-500
Risk of Scarring: low
(Recommended)

Tattoo Removal Method: Rejuvi Tattoo Removal
Pricing Stucture: Cost is Made Up Of Individual Treatments Targetting About 1 Inch of Tattoo Ink At A Time. Average Number of Treatments to Remove a Tattoo: 3-5.
Cost of Each Rejuvi Treatment – $100-$150.
Risk of Scarring: low
(Recommended)

Tattoo Removal Method: Dermabrasion
Pricing Stucture: Priced by Treatment
Average Number of Treatments to Remove a Tattoo: 1-3
Cost of Each Treatment: Cost of Each Session: $100-500
Risk of Scarring: medium
Note: Risk of scarring is higher than for laser or rejuvi. Because of this, dermabrasion is not as commonly used to remove tattoos as it once in the 1970′s and 1980′s.

Tattoo Removal Method:Excision
Pricing Stucture: Priced by size of tattoo
Average Number of Treatments to Remove a Tattoo: 1
Risk of Scarring: high
Note: Excision involves cutting out the skin containing the tattoo. It leaves a scar and is rarely practiced anymore.
(Not Recommended)

Misc. Over The Counter Tattoo Removal Products

Product: TCA Cream
Cost: $50 a bottle
Risk of Scarring: medium
Notes: TCA is a proven technique for tattoo removal but at the expense of a risk of scarring to the skin.
(Not Recommended)

Product: Tattoo Removal Cream. This includes products like Tat B Gone, Tattoo Off, and Wrecking Balm.
Cost: $50-300
Risk of Scarring: low
Notes: Sold in various methods, usually translating to about $50-100 for a month supply. In order to remove a tattoo, it could take 6-12 months of applying the solution. The effectiveness of such products is not proven in the same way techniques like laser and rejuvi are.

Product: Cheese Grater
Cost: $2.99
Risk of Scarring: Absolutely Guaranteed
Notes: Process involves highly painful sessions of grating the skin. Not recommended, but for those of you looking for it, this is by far the cheapest tattoo removal method around.

Or does it?

Actually, much to the relief of tattooed people everywhere, it doens’t necessarily work like this. Sure, you can pay the total costs of removal all at once, but hardly anyone does. For one thing, tattoo removal isn’t a “one time visit to the clinic and then you’re home” kinda deal. Instead, you’ll go in for a number of treatments, usually about half a dozen, but the facts influencing this are unique to each tattoo’s size, color, skin depth, age, and so on.

What this means is that while the total cost of tattoo removal may hit into the thousands, most people are likely to be paying in one of two ways.

First, and most simply, you can just pay by the treatment. This means coming up with a couple hundred dollars every treatment. A couple hundred dollars once or month or once every other month is much easier to come to grips with than the idea of coughing up $2,000 grand all at once.

Secondly, if the first option doesn’t work for someone, most likely they can set up financing with the laser tattoo removal clinic. This means they’ll agree to pay a certain amount at specified intervals until the total cost is paid. For instance, $75 a month, for however many months it takes to pay the entire bill. Your payment plan may or may not include addditional interest and fees for financing the cost of tattoo removal services.

A third option is to take out a medical loan or personal loan to pay for your tattoo removal. This is a last resort option as most likely you will pay steep interest rates, thus skyrocking the amount you’ll end up paying beyond the original tattoo removal cost.

The good news behind all of this is that hopefully now you can see there are options for financing and paying for these services. While it IS quite expensive to do something like laser removal or rejuvi tattoo removal, these options give you choices, and one of them should work for you to deal with the cost of tattoo removal.

Since that’s impossible to do so, we’ll take a look in the other direction. How would a laser tattoo removal clinic explain their pricing structure? Probably something like this.

The total cost of tattoo removal depends on the number of laser treatments used to remove the tattoo.

The number of laser treatments used to remove the tattoo depends on these factors:

1. The size of the tattoo.
2. The age of the tatoo.
3. The depth of the tattoo ink into the skin.
4. The amount of color in the tattoo.

Let’s work backwards here and address these points one by one.

More color in a tattoo translates to more laser treatments. Even the colors themselves react different to the lasers, with some being more “stubborn” than others. Additionally, huge solid black tattoos versus a thin outline logically translates to more laser treatments.

Now this next one relates to how deep the ink is in the skin. If your tattoo was done professionally, this is going to be a uniform depth. But if it was done amateurly or otherwise by a bad tattoo artist, it could be deeper into the skin that it should be. This makes it harder for the laser tattoo removal specialist to their job. obviously this effects the price.

The age of the tattoo is a tricky one. You might think newer tattoos are harder to remove than an old faded tattoo. Actually, older tattoos tend to be harder to remove because the ink has had more time to “settle” into the body.

Lastly, let’s look at the size of the tattoo and how this relates to the price. Obviously, the bigger a tattoo, the more it’s going to cost to have it removed. How this breaks down into actual dollars depends on the laser remvoal clinic. Some clinics may take the tattoo and divide the laser treatments into sections, each one targeting X amount of inches of the tattoo. The bill may then be structured in the same way, with fees according to X amount of inches being treated.

As you can see, it’s very hard to estimate with any certainty how much it will cost to have your tattoo removed without consulting with a clinic and having someone take into consideration your specific tattoo. The only general pricing rule of thumb is that individual laser treatments treatments usually cost a couple hundred dollars, and most tattoos are removed within 5-10 treatments. This reflects the fact that “most tattoos” are only a couple inches in size.

Okay, I’m getting a little carried away here right from the start. What we were talking about? Leprechauns? Oh no, yes, cheap tattoo removal.

Well, actually, leprechauns and cheap tattoo removal have a little bit in common. Usually anyone looking into either subject is engaged in a bit of a fantast world. Leprechauns don’t exist, and neither does cheap tattoo removal.

Ouch!

Let me clarify.

Cheap tattoo removal products and services do exist, but if your goal is to have your tattoo removed effectively, reliably, safely – as in a mininal to near zero risk of scarring, and by a tatto removal professionally who knows what they are doing, then cheap tattoo removal is a pipe dream, because there is nothing that’s cheap that meets these standards.

You can clearly see the price differences between things like laser tattoo removal, dermabrasion, and rejuvi services versus over the counter tattoo removal solutions like TCA cream, Nuviderm, and Wrecking Balm tattoo removal and fade kits.

It’s not that these products might not work, but… well, they might not work, actually, that is the problem, to be perfectly frank about it.

Because a product that fades your tattoo but doesn’t remove it isn’t an effective tattoo removal product. Nor is a product that burns the skin and may create a scar. This doesn’t qualify as an effective, safe tattoo removal method that I would recommend. But I do agree to the extent that yes, it may actually remove your tattoo, and may only cost you $50. But I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.

Getting a tattoo is something that people take a lot of consideration into. And even if they do it on the spur of the moment, they’re still smart enough to delegate the job to a professional. The reverse should also be true. Getting a tattoo removed is something that should also be delegated to the professionals, and NOT rests on the hopes of following an instruction sheet that came along with a bottle of cream purchased on Ebay.

This is your body we’re talking about here, and it shouldn’t be at the receiving end of any sketchy at home medical treatments. This means no at home tattoo removal!

You have to make the decision then: is it really worth it to spend $1,000 or more to get the tattoo ink out and have clear, tattoo-free skin in its place?

Obviously, for someone who doesn’t want any tattoos any longer or needs to get the tattoo removed for a job, the military, or due to gang or prison affiliation – these situations merit that the tattoo be removed. Simple as that.

But for other people – like my friend who thought it would be awesome to get his favorite band’s logo tattooed on his wrist, and so he did it himself at the age of 14 with a bottle of india ink and a needle – it’s not tattoos that are the problem, it’s their specific tattoo that’s the problem. This opens the door to considerating some other creative options.

Rather than fork over the big bucks to have it removed, why not consider getting an awesome tattoo in its place?

Yes, I’m talking about a tattoo cover-up.

Now understand that the viability of this solution is specific to each persons tattoo. The type of ink used, the colors, the depth, the shading, and so on – all these factors are taken into consideration when a tattoo artist is sizing up the possibility of doing some cover up work over top of it in order to give you a new tattoo.

While some tattoos won’t qualify, most will.

This means then that instead of spending $1,000 or more and something like laser tattoo removal, you could instead spend $1,000 or less (!) on a tattoo cover up.

In the end, it’s a win-win situation. You tattoo is “removed” in the sense that whatever it was you didn’t want to see anymore, you will never see again! On top of that (literally), you get a new tattoo!

(And you may even save some money in the process.)

Also, it’s worth mentioning that if you’ve got a preconceived notion that tattoo coverups inherently look like a cover up and not a tattoo on their own, you should do some research before dismissing this idea. It’s amazingly the type of art a professaional tattooist can overlay over an unwanted tattoo. It’s almost like magic, as the artist will create a picture that “erases” the first one and creates a whole new tattoo in its place.