Everything You Need to Know About Cartilage Earrings and Piercings

By far the most popular types of piercings are those on the earlobes. But as you’ve probably noticed, many people are now opting to pierce the upper part of the ears – above the earlobe!

These are piercings for cartilage earrings.

Unlike regular earlobe piercings, cartilage piercings are a lot more complicated. Instead of the soft tissue of the earlobe, the cartilage is harder and thicker. Also it takes a lot longer to heal and as such there’s additional risk of infection.

But at the end of the day, these piercings are still extremely popular, as are the cartilage earrings that go along with them.

As you’ll find though, different types of cartilage earrings are suitable for different types of cartilage piercings! So before you get yourself pierced, you should make sure you know exactly what type of earrings and piercings you want.

Types of Cartilage Earrings for Piercings

While there are many, many different ways you can get your upper ear and cartilage pierced, the fact of the matter is that a few methods in particular are highly popular and are probably what you’re looking at.

For starters, there is the helix and top ear piercings that are on the bit of cartilage that curls up the outer side of your ear. The two safest types of cartilage earrings for this particular type of piercing are studs or labret studs – but you can use rings if you really want to although they can trigger the formation of keloids.

Next up you have the vertical lobe piercings. These piercings are right above the ear lobe on the bit of cartilage that is located there. If you get this particular piercing, you should be aware that you should really only wear straight barbells with it. Otherwise, you could distort the shape of your lobe!

Conch piercings (that are also known as ‘Shell’ piercings), are located at the part of the ear that begins forming a funnel leading towards the ear canal. Because it is deep inside the ear, generally only labret studs or straight barbells are used. If you really do want to use a ring, it is going to have to be a fairly big one.

Last but certainly not least there is the tragus and antitragus. If you try to put your finger in your ear you’ll notice that right at the opening of the ear canal there are two protrusions of cartilage – one inner (nearer your face) and one outer. Wearing cartilage earrings on the inner requires a ‘tragus piercing’ whereas the outer requires an ‘antitragus piercing’.

Both of these piercings can accommodate most types of rings and barbells, but they can interfere with your ability to put your finger in and scratch your ear!

As you can probably see – there are a wide variety of different cartilage earrings and some are suitable for certain piercings while others aren’t. If you want to buy the best cartilage earrings around for your piercings, and other piercing accessories that you might like, just head over to our cartilage earrings store!