A Laser Removal Course Costs More Than Twice a Brow Tattoo

A removal course costs more than twice a brow tattoo

A cosmetic brow tattoo ($800) is one of the cheapest tattoos on Going Rate, and the price includes the mandatory touch-up. Other cosmetic tattooing ($700), such as eyeliner or lip colour, costs a little less and also includes a touch-up. A full laser removal course ($1,800) costs 2.25 times the brow tattoo and more than two and a half times the other permanent make-up, at Going Rate's prices.

Get brows done and later remove them, and the two bills together come to three and a quarter times the original brow tattoo at Going Rate's prices. The same sequence for other permanent make-up comes to about three and a half times the original.

Going Rate's removal price covers a typical full course of laser sessions on any tattoo, priced for the whole course. Brow owners also pay for a colour refresh roughly once a year on top of the brow price ($800), so keeping brows costs more the longer they stay.

Against a sleeve tattoo the maths flips

A full sleeve tattoo ($6,900) takes many hours over multiple sessions, and it costs almost four full laser removal courses ($1,800) at Going Rate's prices. Put the other way, a removal course costs about 26% of a sleeve. The same sleeve money would buy about eight and a half brow tattoos ($800) or nearly 10 cosmetic tattoos ($700).

A sleeve is large and often coloured, and both of those slow removal. CHOICE reported that 47% of tattoos need up to 10 sessions with a Q-switched laser and 26% need more than 15. Smoking, colours other than black and red, tattoos larger than 30 square centimetres, and tattoos on the feet or legs more than three years old all reduce the response to the laser, according to CHOICE.

CHOICE's 2016 guide to removal prices shows how far that can go. Taking average Sydney and Melbourne prices as a guideline, it put the cost of removing a 30 by 40 centimetre multi-coloured tattoo at about $19,500, and a 10 by 10 centimetre colour piece at about $4,500. Those prices are a decade old and a 30 by 40 centimetre piece is smaller than most sleeves, but they show removal cost climbing steeply with size and colour.

Laser tattoo removal takes more than a year

Putting on a brow tattoo takes a sitting plus a touch-up. Taking a tattoo off takes far longer. The Kirby-Desai study, a 2009 review of 100 patients in the Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology, found patients needed an average of 10 laser treatments, with a range of 3 to 20. Its scale assumes 6 to 8 weeks between treatments.

Ten treatments leave nine gaps. At 6 to 8 weeks each, that is 54 to 72 weeks of treatment, more than a year, to clear a tattoo of average difficulty. Dr Mary Dingley of the Cosmetic Physicians Society of Australia told the ABC in 2011 that removal could take ten or potentially even more sessions.

Face tattoos can take longer still. In 2025 the ABC reported on a Hobart man in the Fresh Start Program, which offers free or discounted removal, and said a minimum of two years was required to properly remove his final face tattoo.

In NSW, brows and their removal need no licence

NSW licenses body-art tattooists. The federal ABLIS business licence register lists the NSW tattooist licence at $190 for one year, $415 for three years and $640 for five, in fees for 2026-27. The same register says no licence is needed for cosmetic tattooing that gives a person permanent eyeliner, eyebrows or any other permanent make-up. So the artist doing a sleeve ($6,900) needs a licence and the one tattooing brows ($800) on the face does not.

Removal is looser again. There is no national regulation for laser tattoo removal, and in Victoria, NSW, the ACT, South Australia and the Northern Territory there are no licensing requirements, so anyone can own and operate a laser to remove tattoos, according to researchers from UQ and Victoria University writing in The Conversation in 2024. ARPANSA, the federal radiation safety agency, says lasers for cosmetic purposes are regulated only in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia.

The licensed states ask a lot more. Western Australia's Radiological Council requires a minimum of 100 hours of supervised practical training, at least 50 of them in tattoo removal, a doctor available for medical support, and an in-person skin cancer check by a doctor or nurse practitioner before each new course of treatment. Queensland requires a possession licence for the business and a use licence for the individual operator. Brisbane City Council also licenses tattooing, including cosmetic tattooing, with a new higher-risk licence costing $1,105.95. Whether permanent make-up ($700) or a removal course ($1,800) comes with any licence at all depends on the state.

Who regrets a tattoo, and who removes it

About one in four people regret at least one of their tattoos, and almost half of those go on to have it removed or camouflaged with a new one, Katie Lee of UQ's Dermatology Research Centre and colleagues from Victoria University wrote in 2024. McCrindle's 2023 survey found 23% of Australians regret at least one of their tattoos, rising to 29% of Millennials and Gen Z.

McCrindle also found that 20% of Gen Z and 18% of Millennials have contemplated removal, against 9% of Gen X and 3% of Baby Boomers. Three in ten Australians (30%) had a tattoo in 2023, up from 20% in 2018, McCrindle says, and 35% of tattooed Australians have five or more. UNSW gives a more conservative figure, saying surveys estimate more than 20% of Australian adults have at least one tattoo.

Spending on removal has grown fast. IBISWorld estimates tattoo removal services earned about $119 million in 2024-25, after growing an annualised 11.5% over five years, while tattoo studios earned about $400 million in 2023-24, growing 3.1% a year. Those are modelled estimates for slightly different years, but on them removal earns under a third of what studios do and is growing more than three times as fast.

What's in the ink you would pay to remove

A 2016 government study by NICNAS, now AICIS, tested 49 tattoo inks used in Australia and found only 4 met the European standard ResAP(2008)1. It found polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in 10 of the 12 black inks tested. In 2026, UNSW researchers reported that all 15 inks they bought from Australian suppliers failed current European Union safety regulations for tattoo inks. The UNSW team says its study measured the chemical composition of inks, not health outcomes.

Permanent make-up has its own gaps. A 2017 NICNAS investigation found cosmetic tattoo training courses ranged from 2 days to 10 weeks. It also found that some permanent make-up artists use inks normally used for body-art tattoos to do brows ($800) and other permanent make-up ($700).

Cancer Council Australia says it is not aware of any reported cancer case directly attributable to tattooing, but a tattoo over or around a mole can hide changes and delay a melanoma diagnosis. A 2014 paper in Australian Family Physician counted 16 published cases of melanoma developing in tattoos, recommended that pigment not be placed over pigmented lesions, and said photographing the skin before a tattoo may help future skin checks.

Before the appointment, price the exit

For small face ink, price a full laser removal course ($1,800) alongside the brow tattoo ($800) or the cosmetic tattoo ($700), because at Going Rate's prices the exit costs more than twice the entry. For a sleeve ($6,900), the removal course is the smaller number, but large colour pieces need more sessions than a typical course, so get a quote after a consultation.

Ask a removal provider which laser they use. The Queensland Government's tattoo removal advice says intense pulsed light (IPL) devices are not suitable for tattoo removal. In Queensland, ask to see the business's possession licence and the operator's use licence. Health.vic says lasers and IPL devices used for cosmetic purposes can cause serious health effects such as burns, scarring and eye damage.

Before any new tattoo, photograph moles and keep ink off them. A licensed parlour also matters for blood donors. Australian Red Cross Lifeblood cut the whole blood donation wait to a week for tattoos from licensed Australian parlours or cosmetic clinics, AAP reported in 2023, while unlicensed or overseas tattoos keep the four-month wait.

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