What 147,800 tattoos from 5,894 US artists reveal about how America actually gets tattooed — the ink, the styles, the shifts, and the cities drawing them.
Nearly two-thirds of every piece in the index — 65% — is pure black-and-grey. Full color is a distant second at 23%; the rest blends both. It is the clearest signal in the data, and it holds across nearly every city and style.
Two styles tower over the rest: realism at 23% and fine-line at 19% of tagged pieces. Beneath them sits a long, healthy tail — from century-old American traditional to internet-native cyber-sigilism.
Share of pieces tagged with each style. A piece can carry more than one style, so shares are not mutually exclusive. Read realism as representational black-and-grey, the broad mode — not strictly photorealism.
The real story isn't what's popular — it's what's moving. Read as each style's share of its own year, fine-line and cyber-sigilism climb hard while Japanese and surrealism recede. Realism stays on top, but its grip is loosening.
Each spark is one style's share of pieces per year, 2021→2026; the number is its 2026 share and the change since 2021. Early years rest on a smaller sample, so read the multi-year arc, not any single step.
Black-and-grey rules overall — but color hides inside specific styles. Neo-traditional, American traditional, and new school run bright; chicano, dotwork, and blackwork are almost entirely black-and-grey. This is the cut that tells a supplier what to stock.
Style is regional. Each metro over-indexes on a signature style — the one it draws more than the country does. Dallas and Houston lean chicano; Nashville keeps it traditional; Portland goes ignorant; New York and San Francisco skew cyber-sigilism.
| Metro | Pieces | Artists | Blk & grey | Signature style |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New YorkNY | 26,582 | 355 | 75% | Cyber-sigilism 1.8× |
| Los AngelesCA | 6,176 | 260 | 69% | Anime 2.0× |
| Las VegasNV | 5,389 | 255 | 70% | Geometric 2.1× |
| SeattleWA | 5,044 | 233 | 56% | Japanese 1.6× |
| NashvilleTN | 5,030 | 259 | 57% | American traditional 1.6× |
| DallasTX | 4,806 | 210 | 64% | Chicano 2.0× |
| Salt Lake CityUT | 4,611 | 217 | 70% | Ornamental 1.3× |
| PortlandOR | 4,290 | 189 | 64% | Ignorant 1.9× |
| AustinTX | 3,788 | 193 | 59% | Ornamental 1.4× |
| HoustonTX | 3,743 | 156 | 60% | Chicano 1.8× |
| KnoxvilleTN | 3,742 | 74 | 53% | New school 1.8× |
| San FranciscoCA | 3,442 | 121 | 69% | Blackwork 1.8× |
| San DiegoCA | 3,385 | 170 | 70% | Japanese 1.8× |
| PhiladelphiaPA | 3,380 | 142 | 63% | Dotwork 1.6× |
| ChicagoIL | 3,318 | 155 | 62% | American traditional 1.5× |
| DenverCO | 2,977 | 129 | 66% | Geometric 2.2× |
| AtlantaGA | 2,854 | 112 | 65% | Chicano 1.8× |
| CharlotteNC | 2,550 | 118 | 64% | Anime 2.1× |
| MiamiFL | 2,260 | 106 | 75% | Surrealism 1.9× |
| BostonMA | 2,227 | 88 | 65% | New school 1.8× |
| RichmondVA | 2,207 | 89 | 60% | New school 1.4× |
| Kansas CityMO | 2,149 | 85 | 58% | Anime 1.4× |
| CincinnatiOH | 2,136 | 107 | 68% | Minimalist 1.5× |
| ColumbusOH | 2,029 | 104 | 63% | Minimalist 1.3× |
| ClevelandOH | 1,797 | 79 | 67% | Dotwork 1.8× |
| MinneapolisMN | 1,746 | 78 | 59% | Ignorant 1.9× |
Signature = the style a metro indexes highest above the national baseline (its lift). Metros with enough pieces to be stable; smaller places are pooled. Coverage is US city-level.
Beneath style and color sits the oldest question: what goes on the skin? Grouped into families, one theme towers over the rest — florals, at 17% and over 25,291 pieces. Animals, portraits, and skulls follow; snakes and dragons punch above their weight in the culture but not the count.
Freeform subject labels (79,329 distinct) rolled into families. A further ~16% are abstract or one-off pieces not shown here. Families are approximate — a single tattoo can span more than one.
The sample. 147,800 live tattoo images from 5,894 artists indexed by Perspectiv. Every piece counted here belongs to an artist placed in a US metro; international and unplaced work is excluded, so this is an American picture. A large, working sample of contemporary tattooing — not a census. Coverage is denser in some cities than others.
How styles and color are read. Each image is placed by its position in a visual embedding space, matched to the nearest style signatures, plus a color mode (black-and-grey, color, or mixed). A piece can carry more than one style, so style shares are not mutually exclusive.
Where the edges blur. Well-defined styles — Japanese, traditional, fine-line — label cleanly; broad ones collect their neighbors. Read realism as representational black-and-grey rather than strict photorealism, and treat the smallest slices as directional, not exact.
Why trends are shares, not counts. The raw number of pieces per year reflects when we indexed them, not when tattooing happened. So every trend is a style's share of its own year — the only figure that reflects taste rather than our collection schedule.
Location. Artists are placed at US city level; the two stored spellings of each city are merged. Regional cuts show only metros with enough pieces to be stable; smaller places are pooled rather than over-read.
What this isn't. A snapshot of a living, growing index — figures shift as it grows. Read it as the shape of the craft today, not a decimal-precise ledger.