Jewelry for piercings has become so much more popular these days.  Now, you can find entire websites devoted to offering the latest and greatest in pierced jewelry.  These sites are great temptations to those with a new piercing.  It is fun to celebrate a piercing with a new fancy piece of jewelry, but not all jewelry is made alike when it comes to new piercings.

When I first got my nose pierced, I had a lot of fun looking at various jewelry options.  The one I wanted most though was a sterling silver leaf.  It seemed so perfect, and I almost ordered it right then and there.  As it turns out, however, sterling silver is a horrible metal for a new piercing.  The metal reacts to the open area of the piercing and can cause permanent staining from the oxidation.

If you don’t want your piercing to become black and stay that way, you must avoid sterling silver until it is completely healed.  Some people recommend waiting at least a year to try sterling in a new piercing, because some can take that long to fully heal.

Even though it isn’t as pretty, surgical steel is really the best option for a new piercing.  Unless you have a very severe nickel allergy, surgical steel is going to be hypoallergenic for most people.  It doesn’t tarnish or change colors the way other metals can, so it will always look the way it looks when you first put it  in.

So until your piercing has healed completely, your best bet is to stick with surgical steel and save those specialty pieces for later on.