New Orleans Tattoo Artists

Featured New Orleans Artists

Here are some of the best New Orleans tattoo artists and shops according to our research. If you think we should add anyone to the list or if you see anything that should be edited, contact us by clicking here

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Miranda Brouwer

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Justin Olivier

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist 3
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Stacey Colangelo

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Mecha Tattoo Artist
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Mecha

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist 9
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Matthew Welch

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist 11
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Donn Davis

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Scott Allen

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist 16
New Orleans Tattoo Artist 17

Pauly Lingerfelt

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New Orleans Tattoo Shop Forbidden Art 1
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Forbidden Art

Tattoo Profile: It’s our mission to provide complete customer satisfaction in portrait tattoos. Just let us know what you need and we’ll provide assistance. You won’t find a better tattoo artist in New Orleans, LA.

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Adam Montegut 1
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The New Orleans Tattoo Museum & Studio

Tattoo Profile: We are in a pivotal moment to archive the stories of multiple generations of tattooing for future generations to access their heritage. We do this through creative documentation that builds knowledge and appreciation for New Orleans tattooing traditions and heritage.

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Sailor’s Cross Tattoo and Gallery

Tattoo Profile: Sailor’s Cross provides the highest quality custom tattooing for serious collectors, tattooing everything from traditional/neo-traditional to water color to blackwork, all while in a clean, welcoming, and laid-back environment. Walk-ins are welcome.

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Nikki Vecchio 1
New Orleans Tattoo Artist Nikki Vecchio 4

Tat Starz

Tattoo Profile: We are a fully licensed tattoo shop in New Orleans, with all artist’s being personally licensed as well. As well as looking on here, please google us and check out our reviews online. You will not find a better reviewed shop in the New Orleans area. Thank you for looking, and we look forward to seeing your smiling faces walk into our establishment.

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Juju 4
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Mid City Voodoux Tattoo

Tattoo Profile: Having been voted several times as one of the BEST tattoo and piercing parlors by Gambit Weekly readers in New Orleans, we have a lively atmosphere with the right dash of southern hospitality. We endeavor to make everyone feel welcome: from the seasoned tattoo collector, to the tattoo virgin, to the tourist wanting to escape the French Quarter on a streetcar ride and go home with a permanent souvenir from the Crescent City.

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Keel 4
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Pigment Tattoo

Tattoo Profile: All of our tattoo artists can draw for you. We also have a large tattoo reference library and our own High Speed internet connection as well as Wifi to help you find visual images.

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Idle Hands Tattoo Parlour

Tattoo Profile: Idle Hands Tattoo Parlour offers a extremely clean and professional staff. All of our artists are trained in CPR and Blood Borne Pathogen training and are fully licensed by the state of LA. Our customer service as well as our knowledge of tattoos makes us the go to shop in New Orleans.

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Henry Rhodes 4
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Downtown Tattoo

Tattoo Profile: A classic tattoo parlor with an eclectic twist, the shop has lit up this corner of Frenchmen with its unique culture, local artistry, and creative vibe. Whether you have a sleeve of tattoos or none, Downtowns welcoming attitude and positive energy will make you feel right at home.

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Theophile 4
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Tattooagogo

Tattoo Profile: Our artist are versatile and can help you with all your tattoo needs. Quality tattooing in the New Orleans area since 1994 by locals who will be here years from now when others have moved on. Check out portfolios of tattoos and artwork at Tattooagogo.com

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Randy Muller 4
New Orleans Tattoo Artist Randy Muller 3

Eye Candy Tattoo

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist David Noellert 1
New Orleans Tattoo Artist David Noellert 4

Good Work Tattoos

Tattoo Profile: Good Work Tattoos is located on St. Claude Avenue in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans with expert tattooing from David Noellert, Brent Mccarron, and Chris Blanchard.

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New Orleans Tattoo Artist Jamie Ruth 1
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Treasure Tattoo

Tattoo Profile: Treasure Tattoo was opened by Jamie Ruth in March of 2015 with a goal to create a comfortable and inviting space for clients to get tattooed. In January of 2016 the shop was expanded and Stacey Colangelo came to the shop as well. We want all of our customers to have a great experience here and love to work with our clients to create the perfect tattoo.

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Electric Ladyland Tattoo, which is owned by Annette LaRue and has been open for over a decade and a half, is possibly the most popular tattoo shop in New Orleans today. It is one of the larger shops in the area with over 2000 square feet of space and 10 artist stations. One of the reasons why Electric Ladyland Tattoo has been so popular for so long is because they bring in some of the best tattoo artists in New Orleans and beyond, giving customers peace of mind that they are going to be walking out of the shop with exactly what they wanted on a consistent basis.

While the Electric Ladyland Tattoo is definitely an excellent shop and one a lot of people have been happy with throughout the years, it’s not necessary the right tattoo shop for everyone and it’s certainly not the only shop in town that can do good work for you. New Orleans is a town full of people who take pride in what they do, after all. If you know what type of design you want to get done in the city, the best thing you can do is look through some photos of tattoos artists in the area have done and try to find one that has made similar tattoos to the one you want to get. That little bit of research could be the difference between getting a decent tattoo and getting an amazing tattoo.

Probably the most popular type of tattoo that people like to get in New Orleans is the music tattoo. Music is huge in the city and people love to show off their favorite genres, their favorite bands, and even their favorite instruments by getting music tattoos. Obviously the tattoo artists and shops in New Orleans know that music is of high interest there so they expect people to come through their doors looking to get these types of tattoos. People from New Orleans and those who are just visiting love to get their music tattoos in this city.

Because of the French influence that you will see all over the city, plenty of people choose to get tattoos that pay homage to French history. They can do that by getting a tattoo of some of the French architecture found in New Orleans, or they could get one of the famous French symbols that are found in town, such as the one used by the local sports team, the New Orleans Saints. French quotes are also quite popular since they give the messages an added air of mystery since most people won’t be able to read them.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people choose to get tattoos in New Orleans when they are there for Mardi Gras. This is one of the main reasons why the city is more well-known for tattoos than most other cities. People come down for a wild time and that often leads to them getting some ink to commemorate their experience in New Orleans. There’s nothing wrong with getting tattoos while down in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but you should already have a tattoo in mind when you go into one of the shops so you don’t end up with a design that you end up regretting later on down the road.

New Orleans, Louisiana has a rich tattoo history. Featuring shops such as Electric Ladyland Tattoo, Downtown Tattoo, Tattooagogo, and Nola Tattoo & Piercing, New Orleans is a great destination if you’re looking for some new ink. With a population of 360,740, there are lots of potential customers for the parlors in town. Yelp currently lists 36 different shops when searching for “tattoo” in New Orleans. Google Places lists 77 different tattoo shops in the New Orleans area, which shows how competitive the city truly is. When doing research for your artist, we suggest not paying too much attention to price because quality is much more important when you’re going to be living with the artwork for the rest of your life.

The great city of New Orleans has a really fascinating back story and we are going to talk about the founding of this city followed by the years leading up to the current.

History

The Native Americans of the Mississippian and Woodland cultures were some of the first known people to live in the area we now know as New Orleans. Before 1718, there were very few white settlers. The explorations of De Soto in 1542 and the La Salle in 1682 were among some of the few that came through the area but it wasn’t until the French Louisiana governor, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, initiated the city of Nouvelle-Orleans on the high grounds of the Mississippi River’s mouth, that other white settlers really started to find their home. Le Moyne changed the capital of Louisiana from Biloxi to New Orleans in 1722. A hurricane touched down in the city during that same year and when it was rebuilt, the grid of the city is the same now as it was back then and it is known as the French Quarter.

Under rule of the Spanish and the Louisiana Purchase

France signed treaties that ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1762 and 1763. The find city you know now was a Spanish city for 40 years, and they were involved in heavy trade with Mexico and Cuba. They also took on the racial rules of the Spanish which allowed people of color to be free like anyone else. Unfortunately, in 1788 and 1794, New Orleans was destroyed by fires which led to the rebuilding of the city with a cathedral that is still there today and many of the buildings made out of brick.

Louisiana reverted to France in 1803 who then went on to sell it to the United States just 20 days after the exchanging of hands in the Louisiana Purchase. The War of 1812 and the final battle of this war was fought to protect New Orleans. In this battle, Colonel Andrew Jackson was leading a group of free blacks, Tennessee Volunteers and pirates to the fend off the British forces trying to enter the city.

New Orleans was the third biggest city in the United States and the wealthiest to boot during the beginning parts of the 19th century. South America, Europe and the Caribbean were all recipients of the produce from much of the interior of the United States by way of the ports in New Orleans. There was a great deal of slaves sold in the markets here, but that being said, the community of free blacks thrived during this time. The entire city of New Orleans spoke French until 1830.

New Orleans was the biggest city in the Confederacy at the beginning of the American Civil War. However, it didn’t take long for Union forces to take the city by way of the river and took the city with no opposition. Race became a very politically charged subject during the Reconstruction era and free people of color along with emancipated slaves were taken into the political process. However, the 1870’s brought the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the White League and they forced the blacks out of political discussions. New Orleans remained an influential and powerful port even though the influx of railroads made shipping goods on the Mississippi river less crucial than it had once been.

20th Century New Orleans

New Orleans jazz was born in dance halls and clubs, and New Orleans streetcars were run by electricity by 1900. The city continued to flourish and grow while\ new pump technology was the driving force of the swampland between Lake Pontchartrain and the city’s riverside crescent to be drained. New drainage canals and levees were built and that meant that much of New Orleans residents could now live below the sea level. New Orleans experienced hurricanes in 1909, 1915 and 1965 which damaged the city but never did anything that couldn’t be fixed.

Conflicts over school integration and suburbanization took place after World War II and it led to many of the white residents of New Orleans to leave the city which left the core of the city as mostly impoverished and African American. That didn’t stop tourism from growing and many hundreds of thousands of tourists would visit New Orleans for the Mardi Gras and to see this culture that inspired some of the most talented people in the world including Louis Armstrong, chef Jean Galatoire and playwright Tennessee Williams.

Hurricane Katrina and the Impact

Hurricane Katrina touched down in New Orleans on August 29, 2005. This Category 5 hurricane destroyed almost all of city by destroying homes and leading the break in the levees which cause over 80% of the city to be flooded. There were hundreds of locals killed because of the flooding and thousands of residents were trapped in their homes in unsafe areas and were stuck there until government aid could reach them.

The water ended up receding, but over a year later, only half of the people that used to live in New Orleans came back to the city. 80 percent of those people had come back within the next five years but even today there are still things that need to be fixed from the hurricane. It never did quite regain the luster it had before the hurricane but New Orleans is still a great place to go to learn about their diverse history.

New Orleans can be family friendly or not family friendly and that is one of the best things about it. You can make your trip to New Orleans turn into whatever you want it to be. It is a fascinating city but worth the visit. It was once known as “the city that care forgot” in the 1930’s and you can still feel that energy when you go out on the town late at night. Nothing ever closes down and it is a great place to party. Pack up the family or a group of friends and head down to New Orleans.

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