Jewellery for an initial piercing must be sterile which means it has to withstand temperatures of 140°C in an autoclave. That rules out lots of fancy pieces! The only jewellery I use for an initial piercing is medical grade titanium (Ti 6AL-4V ELI, or Grade 23 titanium), this is the material which passes through your skin.

Apart from its biocompatability, it is light, (about half the weight of surgical steel), which means it puts less strain on the piercing and it is highly polished which means nothing on the jewellery will interfere with the healing tissue and it has no nickel content which eliminates the risk of the oh-so-common nickel allergy.

The size and shape of jewellery I recommend will be determined by what piercing you are having but you do get to make some choices! And it is still possible to have a bit of colour - I stock a range of coloured gems which will also have been through the autoclave. Have a look at the gallery at the bottom of the page.

For those who prefer gold over silver, I also provide gold effect coated titanium jewellery, known as Gold Pvd titanium (Physical Vapour Deposition Zirconium Titanium Nitride). The PVD coating is applied to the titanium product to give it a gold effect and is the same coating used in the manufacture of heart valves. It has a similar friction rating to ice making it super smooth to pierce with. There is no real gold in this product but it is more expensive to manufacture and each piece costs £5 more than the polished titanium equivalent.

Here are some of the gem colours you can choose from for the polished titanium range of jewellery.

There are fewer gem colours available for the Gold Pvd.

I don't stock so many choices with the Black Pvd because I don't think some of the colours work well with it. Besides, if you live on the dark side, surely pink isn't your thing?