When clients request to have their eyebrow or bridge pierced, I always let them know about the special considerations we must take when we do these. While these are, in many ways, just like most other piercings in terms of care, they are delicate in their own right, and we should be careful not to downplay the way these can permanently alter our skin outside the sparkle of new jewelry.

With both of these piercings, we want the jewelry to be suspended in the skin away from the bone. If your brow or bridge is mostly boney, with little to no cushion, this piercing has a substantially lower chance of healing well. We can be tricked by pulling up the skin on both of these areas, which gives us the impression that there’s plenty of skin there to pierce! But we shouldn’t try to force your skin to accommodate a piercing by yanking the skin up and pinning it in place with jewelry. Our skin doesn’t particularly want to house foreign bodies or deal with constant pressure from even the prettiest sparkly additions inhibiting the natural position or movements of our body, and it will eject the jewelry from your skin like an unwanted splinter.

Eyebrow Piercing Basics:

Expected Heal Time: 4-6 months or longer

Initial Jewelry Style: Curved Barbell

Common Initial Jewelry Sizing: 16 gauge (1.2mm) or thicker; 5/16” (8mm) or longer

Placement Considerations:

Not all eyebrow piercings should be placed around the easily recognized, hairy portion of the brow! Aesthetically, it makes sense for the beads of a barbell or ring to orbit the area we personally define as our eyebrow, but there are lots of us who pluck or draw our brows partially or fully outside of the area where the piercing should go.

If we gently touch and roll the skin of the brow, we can feel that there are typically two somewhat distinct textures of skin that come together very near the apex of the bony ridge of the brow. The delicate, soft skin above the eyelid, and the tougher skin of the forehead. Often, an optimally placed eyebrow piercing will pass through a little bit of both of these tissues, framing the most prominent raised area of the brow possible.

Bridge Piercing Basics:

Heal Time: 6 months or longer

Initial Jewelry Style: Straight Barbell

Common Initial Jewelry Sizing: 14 gauge (1.6mm) or thicker; 3/8” (9.5mm) or longer

Bridge Piercing Placement:

We need to be cautious of higher placements, closer to the eyebrows, where the anatomy flattens substantially and our natural facial expressions (like raising or furrowing your brow) will cause so much movement and change in skin tension that it causes irritation, long slow healing, and excessive scarring. Similarly, we should not place the piercing so low that it is resting against the bony ridge of the nose either.

Scarring:

All piercing of the skin results in some amount of scarring. If a piercing is unsuccessful and does not heal well, it may result in a scar that is solid, flat or slightly raised, and discolored. Should the piercing fully reject from the body, the leftover patch of scarring may also affect hair growth of the brow, resulting in a permanent bald patch where the piercing once was. Over time, this type of scar will tend to flatten, fade in color, and become less apparent as it ages, although the hair characteristic of the area may never return.

A successfully healed piercing of the brow/bridge will result in a fully formed tunnel of scarring to house the jewelry and is visibly indented where the jewelry exits the skin. Over time, this scar channel has a tendency to contract and shorten in overall length. This sometimes necessitates a downsize of the jewelry many months after the initial piercing and inflammatory stages have concluded, and also deepens these indentations over time. In some individuals, this natural mechanism of healing can be aesthetically undesirable, but cannot be corrected without surgical intervention.