Tattoo Styles Explained: How to Choose Yours
Four styles, one studio: black and grey, colour, watercolour and fine line.
Most people arrive in Bali knowing roughly what they want and not what it is called. They have a picture saved, or a rough idea, and no vocabulary for the thing in between. This guide gives you that vocabulary: every major tattoo style, what it actually looks like on skin, what it suits, and how it ages. Each one links to a gallery of work done in our Legian studio, so you can see it rather than imagine it.
A note worth having up front: most good tattooers specialise. Knowing the name of the style you want is how you get matched to the right artist rather than whoever is free.
Black and grey
The broadest and most forgiving style there is. No colour, just black ink and the greys you get by diluting it. Shading carries everything, which is why it suits portraits, animals, religious imagery and large-scale work. It also ages better than almost anything else: there is no pigment to fade unevenly, so a black and grey sleeve at fifteen years still reads the way it did at one.
If you are unsure what you want, this is where most people land. See black and grey work
Colour
Anything from a soft wash to full saturation. Colour sits differently on every skin tone and demands more of the artist, because pigment has to be packed properly to last. Done well it carries energy nothing else does, across neo-traditional, new school, comic work and colour realism.
Packed properly by an artist who works in colour every week, it stays rich for years, and it is the style people most often come back to add to. See colour work
Realism
Tattooing something so it looks photographic: a face, an animal, a statue, a scene. It is the most technically demanding style in the room and the one where the gap between a good artist and an average one is most obvious, because the eye knows instantly when a face is slightly wrong.
Realism rewards size. Give it room and the detail carries, which is why most realism work here ends up as a half sleeve or larger. See realism work
Japanese and oriental
Irezumi and its modern descendants: dragons, koi, hannya masks, samurai, peonies, all set in wind and water. The style has rules about flow, about which motifs sit together, about how a piece wraps a limb, and those rules are why Japanese work looks right on the body in a way that pasted-together designs do not.
It is built for scale. Sleeves, back pieces, leg sleeves. See Japanese and oriental work
Fine line
Thin, precise linework with little or no shading: botanicals, script, delicate figures, single-needle detail. It has become the most requested style of the last decade, and in the right hands it is the most elegant thing you can wear.
It is a specialist’s style, so ask to see healed work from the artist who will be doing yours. See fine line work
Ornamental, geometric and dotwork
Mandalas, sacred geometry, patterns that follow the body rather than sit on it. Dotwork builds tone from thousands of individual points instead of solid shading, which gives a softer, almost textile quality. This family also covers blackwork, large solid areas of black used as shape, and the Polynesian and Maori-influenced pattern work.
It is the most architectural style, drawn to your own anatomy so the pattern follows the muscle rather than sitting flat on it. See ornamental and geometric work
Traditional and neo-traditional
Traditional is the old-school language: bold outlines, a limited palette, anchors and roses and panthers. It was designed to stay readable for fifty years and it does exactly that.
Neo-traditional keeps the bold line and opens up everything else: richer colour, more depth, more detail, subjects traditional never covered. If you want something that will still look deliberate in thirty years, this family is the safest bet after black and grey. See traditional and neo-traditional work
Lettering and script
Names, quotes, dates, single words. Chicano script, blackletter, fine handwriting, kanji. Lettering looks like the simplest thing on this list and is quietly the most technical: spacing, weight and flow are the whole job.
Two things make the difference: have it drawn for your body rather than picked from a font, and have a native speaker check anything in another language. See lettering and script work
Balinese
The style you can only really get properly here. Barong and Rangda masks, Garuda, temple gates, the ornamental patterns carved into every doorway on the island. These are not decorative motifs. They carry meaning in Balinese Hinduism, and the good versions are drawn by people who grew up with them.
If you want a tattoo that is actually of Bali rather than merely from Bali, this is it. See Balinese work
Small tattoos
First tattoos, travel markers, quiet additions. Minimalist work lives here too: a few clean lines, a small symbol, something that means a great deal and announces very little.
One thing worth knowing: every design has a size at which it sits best, and a good artist will tell you what that is before you start. Sized right, a small tattoo stays as crisp as the day it was done. See small tattoo work
Cover-ups
A different discipline rather than a different style. Covering old work means designing around what is already there, using dark values, flow and contrast to pull the eye somewhere new. It is constrained, technical, and genuinely satisfying when it lands.
Bring in the piece you want gone and we will tell you at the consultation exactly what it takes. Most things come up better than people expect. See cover-up work, before and after
Tattoos for women
Not a style so much as a body of work: fine line florals, ornamental pieces, delicate placements along the spine, ribs, forearm and ankle, through to full sleeves and back pieces. It is here because it is how a lot of people search, and because placement and flow questions come up differently on different bodies. See work for women
Tattoo Styles that sit across the others
Watercolour mimics paint on paper: washes of colour, soft edges, no hard outline. Soft, painterly and unlike anything else on this list, and best done with a light structure underneath to hold its shape.
Blackwork is solid black used as shape rather than shading. It overlaps heavily with ornamental and geometric work.
Minimalist overlaps with both fine line and small tattoos, the fewest marks that do the job.
Tribal and Polynesian pattern work sits within the ornamental family, bold black pattern that follows the body.
So how do you choose?
Three questions get most people there.
How long do you want it to look sharp? Black and grey and traditional hold their look with the least effort. Every style lasts well when it is done properly and looked after, so ask your artist what yours needs.
How big is it going? Realism and Japanese need room. Fine line and small work do not.
What do you actually want to look at? Browse the galleries rather than reading about it. You will know within a few minutes which one keeps pulling you back, and that is usually the answer.
Once you know the style, the next question is who should do it. That is covered in how to choose the best tattoo shop in Bali, and what it costs is in our Bali tattoo guide.
When you know what you are after, get in touch and book a tattoo. Tell us the style, roughly where it is going and how much time you have in Bali, and we will match you to the artist who does that work.