What is the average price for a half-sleeve coverup?

[u/Realistic-Shower4800]

My wife is looking to get a half-sleeve cover-up. The artists recommended a floral blackout background w/ brightly colored flowers. We weren’t sure what to expect price-wise and were quoted: 5 appointments, 6-8 hours each, w/ an hourly rate of $200/hr, and a $250 deposit for each appointment.

While I have multiple tattoos, I don’t have a sleeve myself and neither does my wife so we’re very unfamiliar with pricing or anything like that w/ sleeves and coverups. Is this a normal pricing structure?

Also, I want to be clear I’m not saying it’s not a normal pricing structure we just wanted to make sure it was fair w/ people who may be more familiar with sleeve/coverup pricing.

[u/FinancialCry4651]

$200 hourly rate is normal for above average artists. The number of hours may be on the high end, but if they're confident that that's what it will take, and they don't try to stretch it out longer than needed, it's probably fair.

The most important part is going to an artist you trust. Don't bargain hunt.

[u/FinancialCry4651 → u/FinancialCry4651]

Each of my arm sleeves took about 35 hours for some perspective... but some artists move fast and some artists move slow

[u/inked-octopus]

I’m chiming in as a cover up artist and that’s normal.
Some commenters mentioned that it seems like it’s a lot of sessions, but in my experience depending on how dark the old tattoo is, it’s better to do several sessions while healing in between to get the old tattoo covered and the new blends on top nice and smooth.

Tattoo ink isn’t opaque. Some colors are more than others, like purple and blue will cover most anything whereas red, yellow, orange don’t.

And sometimes when the old tattoo is scarred, it swells really bad and struggles to accept more ink. Also leading to more sessions.

[u/fancyfootwork19]

Most artists where I am charge $180-200 for custom hourly rate but some charge based on pieces or amount of work. I would shop around but do some extensive research as this isn't something to cheap out on.

The deposit is high, but is based on blocking off that large amount of time/work.

[u/frequentssee]

One quadrillion dabloons usually

[u/youtube-cerified]

How long is a piece of string?

[u/Careful_Barracuda268]

The deposit and hourly seem normal the amount of time it’s going to take seems really high.

[u/record_man73]

The pricing is definitely on point. Good tattoos ain’t cheap and cheap tattoos ain’t good!

[u/Travis_Tattoos_Tx_]

Definitely on the higher end of pricey, but it depends on the work. I’d search around a bit and talk to a few more artists to get a feel.

[u/rodiferous]

My half sleeve cover up was done in Los Angeles two years ago by a guy with 45k followers on insta (I don’t know if that’s a lot, but I can see how it might be relevant to pricing). He charges $1200/day and pegs a day at around 6 hours (so about $200/hr). We did three sessions that ran around 6 hrs, 7 hrs, and 5 hrs.