If you’d asked a few years ago who actually gets tattoos removed, you’d have gotten a lot of assumptions and not much in the way of data. Recently the removal company Removery published an analysis large enough to move that conversation forward, and it paints a picture of the modern removal client that’s younger than we’d have guessed.

A caveat to read first

Before getting to the numbers, it’s worth one honest note about where they come from, because this is Removery’s own client data, drawn from a company that performs removals and first released as a PR Newswire announcement. That means it describes the people who walk into Removery’s studios rather than everyone, everywhere, who removes a tattoo, so while it’s a large and genuinely useful dataset, it’s still one company’s customer base and the takeaways are best held loosely.

What the data covers

Removery looked at appointment and treatment trends from more than 200,000 individuals and over 500,000 tattoos across the United States, Canada, and Australia, spanning November 2019 through October 2024, and they describe it as the largest multinational dataset of its kind in the removal space.

What it shows

  • The client base skews young, with about 38% of people in their 30s and another 29% in their 20s, which makes it mostly millennials and Gen Z.
  • Visibility turns out to be a major motivator, since roughly 46% of the tattoos removed were in highly visible spots like the forearms, hands, face, neck, head, and ears.
  • Black ink dominates, accounting for about 75% of treated tattoos, which is convenient given that black is also the easiest color for lasers to clear.
  • Skin tone shapes the protocol, since a meaningful share of clients fell into Fitzpatrick skin types III and IV, a reminder that safe and effective removal has to be tailored to skin tone rather than run on a one-size-fits-all setting.

The young skew at least holds up against independent data. The Pew Research Center’s 2023 survey found that 41% of US adults under 30 and 46% of those between 30 and 49 have at least one tattoo, which is the same broad age band turning up most often in Removery’s removal numbers, and the same survey found that about a quarter of tattooed Americans regret at least one piece.

The why underneath the numbers

Removery’s own read is that removal today is less about erasing the past and more about evolving with it. For some clients that means a career-driven decision to clear a hand tattoo, while for others it’s a faded design that no longer fits who they’ve become, or simply the need to make room for something new. Whether or not you take the company’s framing at face value, it fits the broader shift, which is that tattoos have become common enough that changing your mind about one is now a fairly normal part of having them.

The short version is that the typical removal client is younger than the old stereotype and is often motivated by where the tattoo sits and how it shapes their working life, and most of what’s coming off happens to be exactly the kind of ink that lasers handle best.

A note on this guide

Tattoo Takeoff is an independent, research-based resource. It is not a clinic and does not perform removal, and nothing here is medical advice. A qualified provider can talk through what removal would look like for your specific tattoo.

Sources

Last reviewed: June 24,2026. Updated as we learn more.