New styles emerge rapidly within contemporary tattoo culture, but few have drawn as much attention in recent years as bruise-like tattoos. Often incorporating the purples, pinks, greens and yellows of bruises, these designs can be arranged in heart shapes, filtered through pastel hues, or rendered as more literal depictions of harsh bruising on the skin. Because of this, they inspire a mix of reactions, with some people finding them uncomfortable or distasteful due to their resemblance to real-world injury.

Many of these polarising designs first emerged through the work of South Korean tattoo artists, before circulating more widely through the internet. One of the early piooners is Seoul-based tattoo artist Limhanbee, whose designs often reimagine bruises through soft washes of pink, green and blue. In a caption shared to Instagram, they described their affinity to these designs: “a bruise is both a trace of pain and evidence of recovery. I came to appreciate that duality, and I wanted to leave that moment, where pain and healing coexist on the body.”

Seoul-based tattoo artist Hyang-mong was drawn to bruise-like tattoos through her experiences of pole dancing. She became fascinated by how the same movement could leave different shapes and patterns across her skin each time. “Many of them looked almost like small galaxies or pieces of the universe,” she says. Because bruises eventually disappear, she wanted “to give that beauty a sense of permanence.”

Removed from their context of pain, there’s a beauty to bruises that make them visually fascinating to artists, which has led to their adoption in other mediums, such as make-up and nail art, as well. “I always try to find inspiration in things that aren’t conventionally beautiful,” says Kraków-based nail artist Danusia, whose work includes multiple bruised sets, alongside mold-spore nails, and dirty detritus designs. “Bruises give you a beautiful colour palette. I also appreciate the unpredictable shapes that your own body can create.”

The appeal of bruise-like tattoos also reflects a wider cultural trend in which signs of injury and discomfort are increasingly used as aesthetic material. In a previous article for Dazed, SFX artist Tilda Mace described this as a move toward utilising discomfort as a creative tool. “I think creating discomfort within a look brings us opportunities to step over that line of normality and comfort, wandering into new territory where we test how others react,” she says. “We are artists creating in a society where all typical beauty trends are being subverted, and we are testing the boundaries of what we can bring to the table artistically.”

This is part of how Seoul-based tattoo artist Kim Daeo explains the genesis of his bruise-like tattoo work. His designs often resemble emblems of inflamed skin or clusters of bruising across the body. “I was searching for a method that couldn’t be easily replicated by just anyone, which led me to experiment with layered colour combinations and techniques,” he explains, adding that that the reaction to these tattoos is often immediate but uncertain. “I think many people still find these kinds of colour tattoos unfamiliar. People definitely react to them as something visually different and unexpected, but there are also people who respond very positively because it feels like something they’ve never seen before.”

These designs sit within the growing popularisation of textural tattoos. Rather than relying solely on clear-cut outlines, many of these approaches work by altering how the body appears at a surface level, introducing gradients, etchings from surfaces, or scale-like patterns onto the skin. This new emphasis on tactility may reflect a broader fatigue with a visual culture saturated by images, generated through AI, and circulated, digested and discarded at record speed.

Within this context, it makes sense that there would be a growing interest in how skin can be made to appear as though it is in a particular condition, rather than as a surface on which images can be displayed. In this way, bruise tattoos represent an expansion of how we are thinking about the body, and an increasing openness to exploring the different states it inhabits.