How to Pierce Your Nose at Home

While it is always preferable to find a doctor or piercing specialist to pierce your nose for you, if done right, it is a fairly quick and painless procedure. Make sure the environment is sterile.

Things You'll Need

• 18 gauge hollow surgical needle, sterile packed
• Round cork, like those in wine bottles, sterilized
• Rubbing alcohol
• Anti-bacterial ointment, preferably with topical anesthetic added
• Cotton swabs on sticks, double ended
• Nose stud with a cork screw end, 18 gauge (not 20) in thickness, and made of nickel-free 18K solid gold
• Small plastic cup for holding some of the rubbing alcohol
• Surgical gloves (sterile)
• A small clean towel

Instructions

The Piercing Process

1. Wash your hands and put on the surgical gloves, then place your chosen piece of nose jewelry in a small cup filled with rubbing alcohol.

2. Using the cotton swab, dip the swab in rubbing alcohol and swab several times both the inside and outside of the nostril you plan to have pierced.

3. 

   Carefully open the sterile-packed 18 gauge surgical needle and coat it with anti-bacterial ointment, being careful not to contaminate it by allowing it to be exposed to anything else in the environment.

4. Open the cork container and set the cork on a clean towel.

5. Using your gloved predominant hand, position the piercing needle to the outer side of the fold in your nostril, where your nostril transitions to its connecting cheek tissue. Position it so that you can picture it exiting inside your nose in an angled, slightly downward and outward position.

6. 

   Place the cork in the natural opening of your nostril. Take a deep breath and quickly push the needle on the first try through your nostril tissue and into the waiting cork.

7. There might be some bleeding, but it should be slight. Swab the inside and outside of your nostril with rubbing alcohol then apply a thick layer of anti-bacterial ointment to the outside and the inside of the piercing.

8. Remove the jewelry piece from the rubbing alcohol and coat it with anti-bacterial ointment, taking care not to contaminate it by allowing it to be exposed to any other surface.

9. Guide the jewelry piece through the outer end of the piercing until it clears the inner side of the piercing within your pierced nostril. Twist it until it is firmly seated with only the head of the jewelry piece visible on the outside of your nose.

The healing process

1. Do not dislodge or remove the jewelry piece for two weeks.

2. Swab the inside and outside of your nostril several times a day during the first two weeks, first with rubbing alcohol, then coat it with anti-bacterial ointment.

3. Once healed, you can switch out the corkscrew jewelry for an 18 gauge, solid 18K gold and nickel-free nose bone. (The small ball tip at the inner end of the nose bone jewelry is much easier to manage, but cannot be applied until the piercing is healed, or it might allow the inner side of the piercing to heal over and close with the ball end of the jewelry lodged inside your nostril tissue, and not completely through it.)

Tips & Warnings

• Be as environmentally sanitary as possible. If you do anything to contaminate the equipment you are using, you will have to start over with new equipment that has not been exposed to any non-sterile surface. Therefore, it is best to order a pack of 18 gauge hollow surgical needles (cost: less than $5), so that should you drop one, you have a spare that is still in a sterile condition.

• Eighteen-karat, nickel-free, solid gold is less irritating and less prone to causing a metal allergy to develop.

References

• How to peirce your nose

Resources

• Recommended high quality body peircing jewelry