About Irish Rose Tattoo in Westerly

Irish Rose Tattoo is a small shop on East Ave in Westerly, a few minutes from downtown and the Pawcatuck River bridge. There are three artists, one front counter, and a lot out front where you can park. The work is custom tattooing by appointment and needle piercing on a walk-in basis, Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 8.

The shop serves Westerly and the towns around it: Misquamicut and Watch Hill to the south, Pawcatuck and Stonington across the state line, Mystic twelve minutes west on Route 1, and Charlestown and Narragansett to the east. In summer a lot of clients are visitors staying near the beaches; the rest of the year it is mostly people who live within half an hour.

The Irish Rose Tattoo artists

Tony Asian does fine-line work: single needle, script, micro-realism and botanicals. He has been tattooing for eleven years, six of them at Irish Rose, and usually books four to six weeks out. If you want something small and precise that still reads clearly in ten years, his fine-line tattoo page shows how he approaches it.

Zak Sadloski has fourteen years behind him in American traditional, black and grey, cover-ups and large-scale pieces. He is the person to talk to about a sleeve, a back piece, or an old tattoo you want gone under something better.

Rayna Lundvall is the shop’s piercer. She has eight years of experience, is APP-trained, and pierces with needles only, never guns. Every piece of jewelry she puts in a fresh piercing is ASTM F-136 implant-grade titanium or 14k solid gold, threadless.

How it works at Irish Rose Tattoo

Tattoos start with the three-step booking form: pick an artist, describe the idea, leave your contact details. Your artist replies within two business days with a flat quote and open dates. Every tattoo is priced per piece, never by the hour, with an $80 shop minimum. Work quoted over $500 takes a $50 minimum deposit that comes off the final price. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

For larger work or cover-ups, a free tattoo consultation of about twenty minutes, in person or by phone, is the easiest way to settle size, placement and price before anything is drawn.

Piercings are walk-in. Bring photo ID, and if you are under 18, bring a parent or guardian with theirs. Piercings run $40 to $70 plus jewelry.

Licensing and hygiene

Irish Rose Tattoo is licensed by the Rhode Island Department of Health and inspected every year. Every artist holds bloodborne-pathogen certification, and the paperwork is framed by the counter if you want to read it.

Needles are sterile, single-use and opened in front of you. Reusable tools, such as piercing clamps and receiving tubes, are cleaned and sterilized in an autoclave. Workstations are wiped down with hospital-grade disinfectant between every client, ink is poured into single-use caps, and anything that touches skin and cannot be sterilized goes in the trash or the sharps container after one use. Gloves change every time an artist touches something outside the clean field.

None of that is unusual for a good shop. It is simply the baseline, and you are welcome to ask any artist to walk you through their setup before they start.

The name

The name pairs two old tattoo-flash motifs, the rose and a nod to Irish heritage, both of which have been on shop walls for well over a century. It is a name, not a style rule: the work done here runs from delicate fine-line script to bold traditional, with no requirement that it be green or floral.

Aftercare and after the appointment

You leave every tattoo and piercing with printed instructions, and the same sheets are online: tattoo aftercare, day by day and piercing aftercare, week by week. Tattoos that heal light get a free touch-up within 90 days, excluding hands, feet and fingers. Piercings include a free downsize check at six to eight weeks. If something looks off while it heals, text a photo to (401) 555-0100 and an artist will take a look.