Drawing time, setup, single use tooling, and the two hours nobody sees. An honest breakdown of a $180 hour.
An hourly rate looks like a number for the time you spend in the chair. It is not. Here is where a $180 hour actually goes.
Every custom piece is drawn twice, once for the idea and once for the body it goes on. A medium panel is three to five hours of drawing before anybody sits down.
None of it is billed separately. It is inside the rate.
Roughly forty minutes a session, split either side of the tattoo, and it happens whether the session is one hour or eight.
Cartridges, grips, ink caps, transfer paper, wrap and gloves are all opened in front of you and binned at the end. Nothing is reused, ever.
On a full day that is a meaningful cost, and it is not a line item on your invoice.
Rent on a ground floor unit, autoclave servicing, waste contracts, insurance and the licence inspections that come with all of it.
Six chairs share that, which is part of why we are not a two chair room any more.
The deposit, which comes off the final price rather than adding to it. Aftercare balm, which we send you home with. The first touch up inside twelve months.
None of those are charged.
Between $160 and $190 an hour here, depending on how long somebody has been tattooing and how much drawing their style needs. The number is on every artist page.
Consults run forty minutes and cost nothing. Come with references, a rough placement, and a budget range. You leave with a date, an artist, and a price band.
