Can You Remove a Colored Tattoo? What the Laser Can't Do

A colored tattoo can usually be faded — often substantially. What we won’t do is tell you it’ll disappear completely before we’ve looked at it in person.

We use the Candela PicoWay for tattoo removal. It’s built to treat all ink colors, including blues, greens, and pastels — the shades that give most lasers trouble — and it’s safe across Fitzpatrick I through VI, so skin tone isn’t the limiting factor it used to be. What’s still a factor: the specific colors in your ink, how dense the pigment is, how old the tattoo is, and how your skin responds. Two tattoos that look similar on the surface can fade at completely different rates. Anyone who gives you a flat “yes, fully removable” before seeing your tattoo is guessing.

Why green, blue, and pastel ink has always been the hard case

This isn’t new, and it isn’t marketing spin. For years, the standard tattoo removal laser was a Q-switched device tuned mainly to break up black and dark pigment — which made sense, since that’s the ink most tattoos are made of, but it meant certain colors didn’t respond. Light greens, blues, pastels, and some yellows could sit on the skin almost untouched after a full course of sessions on an older machine, because the wavelength being used wasn’t matched to how that pigment absorbs light. The laser was working. It just wasn’t working on that ink.

“Every clinic will tell you they use the latest laser.” We say that out loud to clients because it’s true and it’s meaningless without specifics. A single-wavelength device is still limited by physics, no matter how new the casing looks — it can only efficiently target the colors that wavelength was built for.

What three wavelengths actually buys you

PicoWay fires at three wavelengths — 532nm, 785nm, and 1064nm — because no single wavelength absorbs evenly across the full spectrum of tattoo ink. Three wavelengths give the laser more of that spectrum to work with than a one-wavelength device has.

That’s a real advantage. It’s not the same as “removes any color,” and we’re not going to frame it that way.

What matters just as much here is how PicoWay works. It delivers picosecond pulses — energy bursts measured in trillionths of a second — that shatter pigment with pressure waves rather than heat, breaking ink into particles small enough for the body to clear on its own.

How many sessions, realistically

Most tattoo removal runs 5 to 12 sessions, spaced 6 to 8 weeks apart so your skin has time to clear pigment between treatments. Where you land in that range comes down to the color mix, how densely the ink was packed in, the tattoo’s age, and your skin tone — not a number we quote across the board before we’ve seen it. A small, single-color black tattoo and a hand-sized piece with layered greens and blues are not the same job, even at the same size category.

If anyone quotes you an exact session count sight unseen, that’s a guess.

The actual math on what this costs

Pricing is per session, by size — color doesn’t change the per-session price, but it does affect how many sessions you’ll likely need, which is where the real cost shows up.

• Extra Small (under 1”x1”): $199/session
• Small (palm-sized): $249/session
• Medium (hand-sized): $299/session
• Large: $399/session
• Half Sleeve: $499/session
• Full Sleeve: $649/session

Here’s the actual math: a palm-sized tattoo at $249 a session runs $1,245 over 5 sessions at the low end, or $2,988 over 12 at the high end. Same size category, same price per visit — the spread is entirely about how stubborn the ink turns out to be. We’d rather walk you through that range up front than have the final number surprise you.

Before you book anywhere: ask what laser they’re using

If a clinic is advertising colored tattoo removal and won’t name the device or its wavelengths, that’s worth noticing — especially if your tattoo has any green, blue, or pastel in it. A clinic that’s thought this through will have an answer ready.

Our free consultation and Fitzpatrick skin-type assessment exist for exactly this: looking at your specific tattoo and skin tone and giving you a realistic session estimate before you spend anything. No upsells, no packages padded beyond what your tattoo needs — just per-session pricing based on size, and a straight read on what the colors in your ink are going to do. If you want that conversation, reach out and we’ll set it up.