So you went to a reputable salon or tattooist and asked them to pierce your ears. At some point you noticed it wasn’t quite right. In fact, they’re wonky. Your piercings are asymmetrical. Oh no! And when you search online for answers, all you get are unhelpful results about curated ear trends. I’ve been there. Last month, in fact. Which is why I’m writing this article.

You don’t have to live with uneven ear piercings. If your ear piercings are out of alignment, here’s how to fix them.

First, is it less than three months since you got your ears pierced? If so, just take out your earrings, let them heal over completely, and get them done again in about six to twelve months. This is far and away the easiest but most time-consuming fix to uneven ear piercings.

If they have only been pierced a short while, they will still heal up if you don’t put any earrings in anymore. The exact time depends on your unique immune system so try it, there’s nothing to lose.

Okay, so maybe, like me, it took you twenty-four years to notice your lobe piercings were asymmetrical? I got mine pierced when I was 11 and I only noticed last month (age 35) that they were very wrong. For the last 8 or 9 years I haven’t worn earrings, and before that, I wore small hoops for the longest time. Two in each ear.

I started wearing earrings again in January, as I got a pair for Christmas from a dear aunt and I didn’t want them to just sit in a cupboard. It started me on a massive earring fascination which led to me buying the beautiful silver and red heart studs at Argos. These were bigger than any stud earrings I’d ever had before. I’ve worn hoops the size of canary perches before in my younger days when I used to go to raves, but even those are quite small in the place where they go into the ear.

I think the other reason I’d never noticed is because usually, I only look at one ear at a time, but I got these gorgeous big heart studs from the Argos sale at the end of January and discovered that, on one ear, I couldn’t wear the heart stud with another stud earring in my second piercing. The backs of the earrings were colliding and trying to occupy the same space. Then I looked more closely.

Ohhhhhhhh noooooooo! My piercings were uneven! My first ear piercings were very wonky! How had I gone twenty-four years without noticing?

On one side, it looked fine, and the piercing sat perfectly above the apex of the curve of my lobe. On the other side, the piercing was back a good distance. The asymmetry was laughable, to be perfectly honest. My ears looked dizzy.

I can’t stand asymmetry, so immediately, I wanted to fix this.

I went online. There was no helpful information about how to fix uneven lobe piercings. Everything was either doom-mongering about how badly wrong it could go, or results about the wacky and wonderful ways you can style an ear these days if you have lots of piercings and a bucket of cash. I wanted my third lobe piercings done anyway, so I went to a professional piercer to ask what could be done about my wonky lobe piercings.

Apparently, if they’re more than 2mm from where you want them, they can be fixed by piercing the uneven earlobe, even if you’ve had the piercings for decades, like me.

So she lined up my ears and made a mark on my left ear with where the piercing should have been. She re-pierced it for me and it’s now healing well.

It’s critical that you go to an experienced piercer with sterile, hygienic equipment. Anyone can buy a piercing gun, but my God it can go wrong. I don’t want to out a friend so zero details here, but I know someone who is damaged for life from a piercing accident. That wasn’t an earlobe, however, and there’s a lot less to worry about with lobe piercings but it still needs to be done right.

What can go wrong with fixing a wonky ear lobe piercing?

I don’t want to be a downer, but I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to listen to the advice of a piercing professional if you’re in this situation. If they say it can’t be fixed, accept it. If your old piercing is too close to where you want the new one, the two piercings can merge over time and create a big, messy hole that has a centre halfway between the old and new piercing. Eek. On the plus side, if the piercings are that close together, it’s unlikely that anyone will notice that they’re uneven.

Potential complications of piercings include infection, pain, bleeding and scarring at the site. Always get medical advice if unsure.

Conclusion

So the best way to fix wonky or uneven lobe ear piercings is to go to a piercing specialist and ask them whether they can re-pierce one of your ears. There is the possibility that both ear piercings are wonky and off-centre. In this case, you may need to fix both of them or you may choose to use one as the reference point for where to fix the other side and make them both off-centre in the same place.