If you’re a fan of tattoos and piercings, then you’ll find that summer is a challenging time. While there’s no better season to show off your ink and hardware, summer is also the worst possible time to get a new body mod. Here’s an explanation as to why.

First, new tattoos are very sensitive to the sun, which means you have to be able to completely avoid the sun if you get one on a visible part of your body. When they’re healing, you also can’t put sunscreen on them, so the only option is total avoidance, which is pretty dang hard in the sunny summer.

Beyond that, new tattoos and piercings have to be kept out of water – swimming pools, oceans, seas, etc. – until they’re completely healed. For tattoos, that’ll take around two to four weeks, which isn’t that bad, but with piercings, that healing time is much longer: from three months on the low side up to a full year.

So unless you’re okay with missing out on all water activities during your summer, it’s best to abstain from getting tattoos and piercings in the summertime, as hard as it is.

But on the plus side? This forces you to wait on your new tattoo and piercing ideas, meaning that by the time you get around to actually doing them, you can feel more confident that you really want them.