Something to Hide: Hiding a Body Piercing Safely

There are tons of hair-brained ideas out there for hiding a piercing; anything from removing the ball, to covering up with a band aid and pretending it’s a zit! So since we have a moment, we thought we’d talk about the best, easiest, and safest ways to hide or camouflage a variety of common piercings. Ready?

A New nose piercing that you don’t want seen should be done with inconspicuous jewelry. While it’s not safe to cover a fresh piercing with make-up or band aids (they need the air to help them heal), micro nose rings with tips of only 1 to 1.6 millimeters are almost invisible and some even come with a flat disc or a skin-toned dome top for even less of a chance they’ll be seen.

Once the piercing is healed, retainers are the best option. These are clear or skin toned material like bioplast or acrylic, and come with flat or domed disc-like tops that blend right in like they don’t exist. If the nose piercing is completely healed up and a retainer is in, cover-up becomes an option, but in my experience, you won’t even need it.

Septums on the other hand, can be pierced with a retainer so that hiding them is incredibly easy and safe. The retainer, made of surgical grade stainless steel, 14 karot gold, or titanium, can be flipped up inside the nostrils and noone will ever know! Plus, once the piercing is healed, all kinds of cool and colorful retainers are available made of acrylic, metal, and glass. You can wear them like regular septum jewelry, and then flip them back up when it’s time to conceal, so jewelry has to be changed far less often.

Piercings done anywhere around the lip are some of the hardest to hide, because your mouth is constantly moving, but removing a ball or tip, especially in a new piercing, and allowing the barbell to slip under the skin surface is a major no-no! Doing so can cause the flesh to heal around the barbell tip or to become terribly infected, neither of which we want. The best bet for these is to pierce them with jewelry that has a tiny black (or brown) ball or tip, and then, (gasp!) not wear skin make-up? It’s true! Even those of us with gorgeous skin have areas of unevenness and small imperfections, and this will make the tiny dark colored tip blend in so that it’s unrecognizable. If you have freckles or small beauty marks on your face, this trick works even better. Then, once it’s healed, it’s time to get one of these:

This is a push-in top retainer, and as long as you get the size right, it makes any lip piercing downright invisible. The larger bottom sits inside the mouth, and the incredibly thin, flat push-in top lays flat against the skin outside. The best part is that it’s so comfy you won’t notice it’s there, and the disc is so clear and teensy that nobody sees a thing.

A belly button piercing may be the easiest one to hide. For most of us, our navel is hardly ever bared in public, so wearing slightly looser clothing does the trick all by itself. For occasions when the midriff simply must be allowed to breath, the curved barbell retainer will totally do the trick. The disc-like bottom of the clear moveable retainer rests against the “entrance point” of the piercing; for standard belly piercing this will be the part inside the navel where your larger ball or dangle usually hangs, and for others the place around the navel rim where the needle entered your skin when you got pierced. Then the curved barbell goes through the piercing and a clear tiny o-ring closes it off on the other side. It’s extremely hard to spot unless someone’s seriously invading your belly’s space.

Tongue piercings are difficult to hide when first pierced, because the swelling causes you to sound a little funny and have a hard time eating certain things. The best bet for concealment? Get pierced with a half dome tongue ring with tips that are clear or flesh toned, and clam up around people you don’t want to know about it!

It’s silly to take a vow of silence because of a new piercing, but salt water rinses, swelling remedies, and careful verbalization are the ticket to getting away with a new tongue piercing. When it’s all healed up, grab a bioplast barbell, available with tips that are clear, or come in a variety of pinky and peachy tongue-matching tones.

Things to remember for concealment safety:

1.) Never get pierced with acrylic jewelry. Acrylic is easy to scratch up or slough the surface of, which won’t be terrible or even noticeable in a healed piercing, but can spell disaster for a new wound. Bacteria collects in those tiny micro scratches, making it incredibly easy to get an infection.

2.) Never use make-up directly over or around a new piercing. If the make-up gets inside, severe irritation can occur.

3.) Always get pierced by a trusted professional who can help advise you of which jewelry is best for hiding your new and healing piercing.

Hi Sai, You could potentially use a curved retainer, like the belly ring ones, if your eyebrow piercing is done at 16 gauge.