Everyone with a piercing needs to read this

Contemplated adding another piercing to your already studded ear in the past few weeks? You’re not alone: piercings are on the up, with Metal Morphosis noting that piercings at their Topshop studio have almost doubled in the past four years.

Their General Manager, Clem Kitchmeier, chalks this down to piercing going ‘from extreme to mainstream,’ and she has a point: with celebrities like Rihanna, Kate Moss and Scarlett Johansson sporting multiple studs everywhere from their ears to naval to septums, it was only going to be a matter of time before being peppered with piercings became the norm.

But just because getting a new piercing is now a speedy and easy way to up the ante on your look, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to take looking after your fresh piercing seriously. In fact, if you don’t get piercing aftercare right, you run the risk of infection, which, at its worst, could mean a trip to A&E to have the stud removed.

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To help you avoid any nasty infections and reduce the risk of anything going wrong, we asked jewellery designer and piercing expert, Maria Tash, to break down precisely how to care for a fresh piercing, and have shortlisted the best places to go to get yours. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s the best way to clean a new piercing?

For non-oral piercings, like those on the ear, you want to clean it twice daily with a mild aftercare product like a wound wash sterile saline cleanse, either on a sterile wipe or by soaking. When washing hair, try to keep products out of the piercing and irrigate the piercing afterward thoroughly to wash out any soap residue.

What shouldn’t you do to a new piercing?

Make sure you don’t touch a healing piercing with dirty hands! And keep an eye on the cleanliness of other things that touch it like your sheets and pillowcases, which should be clean of foreign matter (so keep your pets off the bed while your piercing is healing). Ideally, sleep on your back if you can to avoid the torquing of jewellery and skin. If you’ve pierced your torso, it’s helpful to wear cotton clothing for ventilation.