Why I use NeilMed
There are a lot of aftercare products on the market. Saline sprays, piercing-specific solutions, sea salt DIY mixes, gels, creams. I use NeilMed Wound Wash, and I recommend it to every client, because it's the simplest thing that actually works.
NeilMed is sterile saline — 0.9% sodium chloride in a pressurised can that delivers a gentle, consistent spray. No additives, no fragrance, no tea tree oil, no anything else. The spray mechanism means you never have to touch the piercing directly, which removes one of the biggest sources of contamination and irritation. It's available at most pharmacies and drugstores for a few pounds or dollars. There is no reason to use anything more complicated than this.
The products I actively tell clients to avoid: anything with tea tree oil, anything with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, any piercing-specific gel or cream, and DIY sea salt solutions. All of these are either too harsh for healing tissue, or too variable in concentration to be reliable. Stick with NeilMed.
How to actually do your aftercare
Twice a day. Spray the piercing, leave it alone. That's it.
More specifically: spray NeilMed directly onto the piercing, front and back. Let it sit for a few seconds. Then rinse with clean water if you're in the shower, or let it air dry if you're not. Do not rotate the jewellery. Do not pick at any crust. Do not scrub.
A freshly done lobe. This is what a happy, well-placed piercing looks like right after the appointment.
The crust that forms around a healing piercing is lymph fluid — it's a normal part of the healing process and it's not dirty. Picking at it or trying to remove it aggressively irritates the fistula (the tunnel of skin forming around the jewellery) and sets healing back. Soften it gently with the saline spray and let it come away on its own.
The drying rule applies everywhere, all the time
Water is fine on a healing piercing. Prolonged moisture is not. The biggest aftercare mistake I see is people not fully drying their piercings after showers, washing their hair, or swimming.
After any contact with water, gently pat the piercing dry with a clean piece of paper towel or kitchen roll. Not a cloth towel — cloth towels harbour bacteria and can catch on jewellery. A fresh piece of paper towel every time. Then leave it alone.
This applies to ear piercings in every position, but it's especially important for anything in the cartilage or any placement that tends to sit in a fold where moisture lingers. Moisture trapped against healing tissue is a reliable route to irritation bumps, and irritation bumps are one of the most common things I see that could have been avoided.
Everything else you need to know
Sleep on a travel pillow or put a clean pillowcase over a travel pillow so your ear sits in the hole without pressure. Pressure on a healing piercing while you sleep is a very efficient way to cause an irritation bump or push the placement off.
Keep hair products, makeup, sunscreen, and perfume away from healing piercings. These are all irritants. If you colour your hair, cover your piercings with cling film or ask your colourist to work around them carefully.
Don't submerge healing piercings in pools, lakes, the sea, or hot tubs. Showers are fine. Baths are fine if you keep the piercing above water. Everything else is a significant contamination risk while you're healing.
Don't change the jewellery early. I know you want to. Wait until it's healed, then come back and we'll do a proper downsize or jewellery change together.
A note on healing timelines
Lobes: 6 to 9 months minimum. Cartilage: 9 to 18 months, sometimes longer. These are the real numbers. The 6-week timeline you may have heard at a mall kiosk is the time it takes for the surface to close, not the time it takes for the full fistula to mature. Changing jewellery at 6 weeks on a cartilage piercing is one of the fastest ways to set everything back.
Healing isn't linear either. A piercing can feel fine for months and then react to a change in routine, a bad night's sleep position, or a stressful period. That doesn't mean something is wrong. It usually means it needs a bit more attention for a week or two and then settles back down.
An irritated piercing. Come in and let me look at it, not Google it. (Image shared with client permission.)
If something feels off, come to me first
If your piercing is doing something unexpected — a bump, unusual swelling, discharge that doesn't look like normal lymph fluid, persistent pain after the first few days — come to me before you go to Google. I mean this genuinely. Google will tell you that you have an infection, send you to a GP who will prescribe antibiotics and tell you to remove the jewellery, and the result will be a piercing that closes around an active problem and scars.
The vast majority of issues I see are irritation, not infection. Irritation is addressed by removing the irritant and giving the piercing some support. It doesn't require antibiotics and it doesn't require removing the jewellery. But the window for dealing with it correctly is much easier if you come in early rather than after the internet has sent you in several wrong directions first.
Reach out any time. That's what I'm here for.
The payoff. A fully healed gold curation. Worth every second.
The short version: NeilMed twice a day, keep it dry, leave it alone, and don't change the jewellery early. Come to me if something feels off. That's genuinely all of it.