Placing a new tattoo on untouched skin is like creating a new painting on blank canvas. The artist has complete freedom of expression, constrained by the customer’s wishes and skin color. When one wants to get an unwanted tattoo covered up, however, the difficulty is much greater. The problem with covering up tattoos is in taking two different designs that may be completely unrelated and trying to superimpose one over the other in such a way that the older tattoo becomes “invisible.” This is rarely able to be accomplished well. The problem arises due to a number of factors:1) large area of the original tattoo
This requires that the covering tattoo be very large, usually 2-3 times larger than the original.
2) dark colors used in the original tattoo
Light color cannot be used over dark ones. Usually a cover-up tattoo has to be dark to work.
3) very dense original tattoo
If the artist is creating a cover-up tattoo with an intricate design then a large “blob-like” original tattoo under-it is very design-limiting, probably forcing him or her to create a larger blob.

There is no easy solution to this problem. The best available solution is laser tattoo fading followed by cover-up tattooing. Especially when working with easy to fade tattoos, such as names, even if the tattoo is not perfectly removed after 2 or 3 treatments, which it rarely will be, it will still probably be light enough that a satisfactory cover-up can be performed. This will broaden the artist’s choice of colors that can be used for th cover-up and greatly improve the design options.

Since not every tattoo is removable, not every tattoo will fade with treatment. Some inks, like iron-based inks turn or stay black with laser treatment and are very difficult to fade. Others, such as charcoal-based inks, fade very easily. It’s usually impossible to know what you have in a very old tattoo, but you can only find out by trying. It’s best to find a tattoo removal clinic that performs a lot of tattoo removal procedures and has an ongoing relationship with local tattoo artists.