When can I change my nose piercing?

The short answer is four to six months for a nostril and two to three months for a septum, and almost nobody wants to hear it.

Your nose piercing will look completely healed at around six weeks. The outside seals quickly because the surface skin closes first. Inside, the channel is still a thin, new, fragile tube of tissue that tears if you drag jewelry through it. That gap between looking healed and being healed is where most nose piercing problems are created.

The four tests

Do not go by the calendar alone. Your piercing is ready when all four of these are true, not three:

1. No tenderness. Press gently beside the jewelry. Nothing.
2. No discharge or crusting for at least two weeks.
3. No redness or pink tinge around either opening.
4. The jewelry moves freely with no tugging or resistance when you touch it.

If any one of those fails, wait another month and test again.

Downsizing is not the same thing

There is one jewelry change that should happen early: the downsize.

Your initial post was deliberately longer than needed to leave room for swelling. Once the swelling has gone, at about four to eight weeks, that extra length sticks out and catches on towels, pillows and clothing. Have your piercer fit a shorter post.

This is not the same as a full jewelry change and it should be done by a piercer, not at home. It is short, quick, and it prevents most nostril bumps.

Doing it yourself, safely

Once you have passed all four tests:

• Wash your hands and clean the piercing with saline first.
• Do it after a warm shower, when the tissue is soft and pliable.
• Have the new jewelry ready, cleaned and to hand. The channel starts shrinking the moment the old jewelry is out.
• Do not force anything. If it resists, stop.
• Use a flat-back labret, not a nose bone or an L-shape. Bones have a ball fused on the end that you must force through the channel; L-shapes rotate inside the nostril and are hard to insert.

For a first change, having a piercer do it is genuinely the better call. It costs little, takes two minutes, and they will tell you whether it was actually ready.

If it will not go back in

This is common and it is not a disaster, but the response matters.

Do not force it. Pushing hard against resistance creates a false channel through the tissue alongside the real one, which is painful, bleeds and heals badly.

Instead:

1. Try again after a warm shower with a gentle, straight angle.
2. Try a taper if you have one, or ask a friend to help you see the angle.
3. Go to a piercer. They reinsert jewelry into shrunken channels routinely, using an insertion taper, and it takes seconds.

If it has been out for days rather than hours, the channel may have closed. A piercer will tell you whether it can be reopened or needs re-piercing.

Keep a titanium retainer somewhere you can reach it. If jewelry ever falls out, having something to put straight back in saves the piercing.

Septum piercings

Two to three months, because the sweet spot is soft tissue with a good blood supply rather than cartilage.

The particular trap with a septum is flipping. If you hide the piercing by flipping a horseshoe up into your nose every morning and down every evening, you are dragging the ring through the channel twice a day, and that is enough movement to keep it inflamed for months. If you need it hidden, wear a retainer instead of flipping a ring.

What to change into

Implant-grade titanium (ASTM F136) or solid 14k or higher gold. Threadless or internally threaded, so the post that passes through the channel is smooth.

Gold-plated, mystery “surgical steel” and sterling silver are all poor choices for a piercing that is less than a year old. Silver in particular can tarnish against tissue and leave a permanent grey mark. See the jewelry material guide.

If something goes wrong after a change

A bump appearing within days of a jewelry change is an irritation bump, and the cause is nearly always the change itself or the new jewelry. Put the old jewelry back if you can, keep up saline, and give it four to eight weeks. See piercing bump vs keloid.

Heat, spreading redness, thick coloured discharge, increasing swelling or fever means see a doctor and leave the jewelry in. More in infected nose piercing.

This article is for education only and is not medical advice. If a piercing is hot, swollen, spreading redness, oozing yellow or green discharge, or you have a fever, see a doctor today.