How to pair watches with your wrist tattoos

Buffy Acacia

The stigma around tattoos is slipping faster and faster with each passing year. No longer are we assumed to be criminals, or examined like celebrities in gossip magazines. Visible tattoos might not even affect your ability to land a job, as long as they’re not overly extreme. For that reason, wrists are a prime location for some ink. Long sleeves cover them up when you need them covered, but they’re a great spot for self-expression when you’re in a t-shirt. So what happens when you get tatted up and discover your favourite watch looks strange now? Well, here’s how to pair watches with wrist tattoos.

First things first, what tattoos are you getting?

If you’ve read this far, then you know tattoos are permanent. Sure, laser removal is a thing, but it’s both more expensive and more painful than the tattoo in the first place. Conversely, your personal tastes and style are nowhere near as permanent. That’s the main reason why you should never plan your tattoos around your current watch collection. Make sure that the tattoo is something true to yourself first, and the watches can come later. Obviously I’d never suggest what tattoos you should and shouldn’t get, but please don’t get a tattoo of a Rolex on your wrist.

Colour theory

Tattoo styles have come so far in the last couple of decades alone, and the prevalence of coloured ink is at an all-time high. Regardless of the line and shading style, a popping colour can make a good tattoo into a great tattoo. That is definitely going to affect what your watch looks like though, because you’re altering the neutral skin tone that surrounds it. For example, you may have covered your wrist in bright crimson roses with shining white highlights and dramatic black lines. Sounds like a sick tattoo, but slap a green-dialled watch on that wrist and it may look like Christmas.

If you’re looking for a method to pair your colourful tattoo with a watch, consider revisiting the colour wheel which you were likely introduced to in school. Opposites on the wheel are considered complimentary colours, so you know that blue and orange will always look great, just like purple and yellow, or teal and pink. Colour temperatures can be a good guide as well, so sticking with warmer or cooler tones will likely blend together nicely. The same theory applies to the metal of the watch case, with stainless steel being a cool, white tone, yellow gold being warmer, and rose gold being the warmest. When in doubt, sticking to a monochrome steel watch with a black dial is always a safe bet.

Sizing

When you wear a watch over a tattoo, there’s some inherent obfuscating going on. Depending on what your tattoo looks like, the size of the watch case may have a big impact on the overall design. Maybe there’s a focus point of the tattoo that gets blocked from view, leaving your watch with an abstract or confusing background. In some cases you may actually want to start looking out for larger watches so that the whole design is covered, only to preserve its integrity as a single artwork. Otherwise, you might find yourself returning to vintage levels of tiny cases, showing off as much of the tattoo as possible while still being able to enjoy a watch. A worst-case scenario would involve putting your watch on, only to discover that the remaining tattoo has been transformed into something rude like a Mad Magazine fold-in.

Shape

As with any artwork, lines can be just as important as colour. It may be more open to interpretation, but being conscious of how the lines of your tattoo and the lines of your watch interact can only be a good thing, and separates those with an eye for detail. Most tattoos avoid the use of straight lines because our skin can shift and twist to make them look strange, but geometric tattoos have also been quite popular lately. A square or rectangular watch may look at odds with a flowing background, or the contrast might actually be cool. Judge this on a case-by-case basis, but it’s something to be aware of regardless.

Consider becoming ambidextrous

So what happens if your favourite watch and your new tattoo are actually no longer compatible? Well, there’s a simple solution on the other side of your body. Unless you get mirror-matched tattoos on both wrists, you could try swapping it over and wearing it on your dominant side. It will definitely feel weird at first, but the strangeness will fade and it’s highly unlikely anyone would actually notice. Once you’re used to it, you’ll be free to experiment and see which wrist your watch looks better on. I tend to favour bold, trad-style lines and funky colours on my left side and more intricate designs on my right, and that’s made its way down to my wrists. Even though I’m left-handed and normally wear watches on my right wrist, I can happily wear something on my left when it doesn’t match the red and black flowing fabrics that are depicted on my right.

If you’re interested in any of the watches you’ve seen in these photos, they’re all currently available at the Time+Tide Shop.