Eyebrow Healing Stages

Permanent Makeup Healing Stages & Troubleshooting Guide

Following your aftercare instructions is the single most important factor in achieving beautiful, long-lasting permanent makeup results. When healed properly, your brows (or other PMU procedures) will look very similar to how they looked when you left the clinic—just softer and slightly lighter. Below is a breakdown of the normal healing stages, followed by an important troubleshooting section to help you understand what can affect pigment retention.

Permanent Makeup Healing Stages: What to Expect

Stage 1: Immediately After Your Procedure

Day 1

Your brows will appear darker, bolder, and more defined than your final healed result. Mild redness, swelling, or a feeling of tightness in the skin is normal. This may temporarily affect symmetry or make the brows appear thicker.

Stage 2: Oxidation Phase

24–48 Hours

During the first one to two days, your brows may look one to two shades darker as the pigment oxidizes and rises closer to the skin’s surface. This is temporary and completely normal.

Stage 3: Light Exfoliating Phase

Days 5–6

Light exfoliation may begin to occur but in most cases there is none whatsoever. With proper aftercare, there should be no scabbing ever. If enough ointment was used, there will be no flaking. If there is heavy flaking or scabbing that is taking pigment with it, something interfered with the healing process. The culprit is usually that it dried out while sleeping, sweating occurred or client did not cleanse the initial weeping and allowed crust to form. Adding more ointment at this point will only soften the already formed scabs/flakes. At this stage, the shape may look slightly uneven or patchy—this is normal and will continue to refine as healing progresses.

Stage 4: Ghosting & Color Return

Days 7–14

As new skin cells regenerate, the pigment may appear lighter or seem to fade temporarily—this is known as the ghosting phase. Around days 9–14, the color will begin to “bloom” back as the fresh skin becomes more transparent. At this point, you should discontinue ointment use and switch to a broad-spectrum SPF 50+ to protect your results.

Stage 5: Final Healed Results

Weeks 3–4

By weeks three to four, your final healed color and shape are fully visible. Most clients do not need additional work until their annual maintenance appointment. If minor refinements are desired, optional tweaks are available within this time frame for $99.

Troubleshooting: Why Pigment Sometimes Doesn’t Heal Evenly

Once your pigment is implanted into the skin and does not wipe away during your final cleanse in the clinic, your long-term result depends entirely on how your skin heals and how well aftercare is followed. If your healed result looks noticeably different from how it looked when you left the clinic—aside from being slightly lighter or softer—then something interfered with the healing process.

If you experience uneven fading, where pigment is missing in only one area or on one side instead of fading evenly across both brows, this almost always indicates that something happened to that specific area during healing.

The Most Common Causes of Pigment Loss Include:

• Drying Out of the Skin

  If ointment rubs off—especially for side or face sleepers—the area can dry out and scab, pulling pigment out when it sheds.

• Scabbing

  You should not experience any scabbing. Scabs form when lymphatic fluid is allowed to build up and dry into a crust during the first 24–48 hours. When that scab comes off, it can pull pigment with it.

• Natural Brow Hair Interference

  If ointment was not properly worked into the skin beneath thick natural brow hair, those areas may have dried out and lost pigment.

• Sweating & Exercise Too Soon

  Heavy sweating, working out, or excessive heat exposure during early healing can cause patchy pigment loss.

• Product Exposure

  Makeup, makeup remover, cleanser, toner, moisturizer, shampoo, or active skincare ingredients on the treated area during early healing can interfere with pigment retention.

• Pre-existing Tattoo or Scar Tissue

  If you have pre-existing tattoo from another provider that is being covered up, you may have some pre-existing skin damage that causes pigment retention issues. You may have old carbon pigment that interferes with new pigment as well.

A Very Important Truth About Healing

Once your procedure is completed and the pigment remains in the skin after cleansing, your technician no longer controls the outcome—your healing process does. If you walked out of the clinic loving your results, your healed result should look virtually the same, just softer and lighter.

The only time this is not the case is when something interferes with the healing process—and this is true 100% of the time. IF IT DOESN'T WIPE OFF, IT IS IMPLANTED INTO THE SKIN. Pigment loss due to aftercare issues, scabbing, sweating, friction, or product exposure is not the result of technician error or technique.

Life happens. We forget ointment. We sleep on our brows. We sweat. We accidentally get products on the area. These things can—and do—affect healing.

When aftercare is followed perfectly and healing goes smoothly, your results will heal beautifully, predictably, and evenly.

Important Exception: When Color Changes Are Pigment-Related

There is one important exception to the rule that healed results reflect the original post-procedure appearance. In rare cases, a client may leave the clinic with beautifully brown brows, only to see them turn blue or purple three to four weeks later. When this happens, it has nothing to do with aftercare, healing, or client compliance.

These dramatic color shifts are caused by the use of carbon-based pigments—formulas originally designed for traditional body tattoos, not permanent makeup. While some of these pigments are now being marketed for PMU, they are known to shift to cool, unnatural tones over time. When this type of color change occurs, it does not appear in isolated spots. Instead, the entire treatment area on both brows will shift consistently within weeks or a few months after healing.

For this reason, I do not use carbon-based tattoo pigments on my clients, and this type of color change will not occur in my work. However, this is a clear example of a situation where a client may love the color when they leave the clinic, yet the healed result looks completely different—not in shape, but in overall color tone.

When brows heal blue or purple, it is 100% the result of pigment selection and pigment ingredients, not the client’s skin, healing response, or aftercare routine.

Permanent Makeup Aftercare