There is a moment in every tattoo studio (the hum of the machine, the cold wipe of the skin, the brace) that has kept countless people from ever sitting in the chair. The CipherX painless tattoo patch is designed to make that moment disappear entirely, and the London biotech company behind it says it already has.
How the CipherX painless tattoo patch works
CipherX has developed a system that replaces the traditional tattoo gun with a patch embedded with microneedles made from a dissolvable polymer loaded with tattoo ink. The patch is pressed directly onto the skin and left in place for 15 minutes. During that time, the polymer needles dissolve and the ink migrates into the skin, leaving a permanent design with no machine, no vibration, no blood.
The reason the process is painless comes down to scale. According to designboom, the needles are less than 1 millimetre long. At that size, they do not reach the nerve endings that register pain. ‘When you scale the needle down and you apply it to your skin, you don’t really feel the penetration anymore because it doesn’t actually touch your pain receptors,’ founder and CEO Ferdinand Kohle told Dezeen.
There is no aftercare either. No clingfilm. No second skin. No moisturiser regiment for the first two weeks. The company says customers can walk away from the application and carry on with their day.
The co-founders and the award behind the design
CipherX was co-founded by Ferdinand Kohle and Karl-Anton Harms. The pair have already attracted industry recognition for what they have built: the applicator received the Red Dot Best of the Best award in 2026, one of the most coveted honours in product design, as designboom reports. That kind of accolade matters in a category where scepticism is natural, the claim of a truly painless permanent tattoo is the sort of thing that invites scrutiny, and independent design recognition helps make the case.
The CipherX painless tattoo patch uses what the company calls microdot tattoos, and the current catalogue runs to 13 designs. The range includes a cross, a butterfly and a star, each priced at £50. Following a launch last month, the company has already applied 500 of them.
What this means for people who have avoided tattoos until now
The traditional tattoo has always carried a threshold, not just of pain tolerance, but of commitment and anxiety. Studios do their best to put clients at ease, and numbing creams have become a cottage industry in their own right, but the needle itself has remained a genuine deterrent for a significant portion of people who are otherwise drawn to the art form.
The CipherX approach sidesteps the deterrent rather than managing it. Because the microneedles are less than 1 millimetre long, they sit in a different category from the standard tattoo needle, which penetrates deeply enough to reach the dermis and, in doing so, the pain receptors in the surrounding tissue. The polymer dissolves; the ink remains; the discomfort does not register in the way it ordinarily would.
Whether the results satisfy those who want larger or more intricate work is a separate question the current 13-design catalogue does not yet answer. For now, CipherX is operating in the territory of small, considered marks, the kind of tattoo someone might describe as their first, or their test.
The CipherX painless tattoo patch is also, from a practical standpoint, a product that travels well. No studio appointment, no healing period to plan around, no need to keep a fresh tattoo out of the sea for a fortnight. For the growing number of people who treat a city break or a longer trip as the occasion for something permanent, that has its own appeal.
Having applied 500 microdot tattoos since launching last month, CipherX is already gathering real-world data on how the patches perform, and the Red Dot Best of the Best award suggests the design world, at least, thinks the applicator itself is a serious piece of work. Details on where to experience the patch can be found via Startup Selfie.