Planning a whole ear: the spots, the order and the pieces

Most people who want a whole ear arrive with a photo of someone else's. That's a good way to show me what you like and a poor way to plan, because it was built on a different ear. An ear stack that reads as one thing starts from your own ear and the pieces you love, then goes in one spot at a time, in an order that lets each one heal.

Start with your ear, not the photo

Ears vary more than people expect, and the variation decides the plan. Some have a deep, cupped conch with room for a big piece. Some have an inner fold too flat to hold a rook well. Some have a tragus too small to take one. The small fold at the front, where a forward helix goes, can leave plenty of room or very little.

So I look first. Bring the pictures you have saved: they tell me what you're drawn to. Then we work out how that fits the ear in front of me. The spot pages go into each place: the helix, forward helix, conch and tragus, and every spot together on the placements page.

Then the pieces

Every piece has a line it wants to sit on. A ring follows the hole, so the angle of the piercing decides how it hangs. A cluster or a shaped end wants the post to meet the skin square, so it sits flat. A piece chosen first gets a spot placed for it.

That's why we pierce gold fresh. You choose the piece at the table, we find the spot it suits, and it goes in at the piercing, in the price. A piercing is $150 in implant-grade titanium, jewellery included, or from $350 in solid 14k gold. You can see the case online, or hold pieces up to your ear at a Gold Viewing: thirty minutes, no needle, nothing to buy, and no charge.

The order the piercings go in

An ear built one piercing at a time, each decided on the day, tends not to hang together. Not because any one was wrong, but because none of them knew about the others.

Lobes first is a habit, not a rule

Plenty of people start with their lobes, and that's fine, but it isn't a rule. Lobe tissue is soft and heals in three to six months. Cartilage is dense and slow: about nine months for a helix, nine to twelve for a conch or forward helix, ten to twelve for a tragus. If the plan is built around a conch or a helix, there's a good case for starting there, so the longest healing is underway while the rest waits.

What sleeps on what

While a helix, conch or tragus heals you need a side to sleep on, so we'd rather not do both ears at once. A tragus or conch also keeps in-ear buds out of that ear for the first three months, and a helix keeps over-ear headphones off it. So put the spots that bring the same restrictions on the same ear, and let the other ear carry your pillow and your phone. Two or three up one rim, a double or triple helix, we do pierce in one visit as a matter of course.

Beside a healed spot, not a healing spot

After the first pieces, you come back as each one heals, and the next goes in beside it. A spot still settling is easily knocked by work next to it. Readiness is judged in the room, not counted off a diary. Your checkup at four weeks is included, and that's when the post is shortened so the end sits close.

Spacing: room for every face and every back

Every piercing takes more room than the stone you see. There's the face of the piece at the front, the flat back or disc behind the cartilage, and at the start, a longer post to leave room for swelling. Two spots drawn tight can look fine on paper, then crowd each other once the pieces are in.

So the drawing is made with the actual pieces in mind, not dots. A ring that will one day wrap the outer conch bridges two marks, so both are planned together even when only one is pierced. Small pieces stepped along a forward helix need even spacing, so they read as a line rather than a scatter.

A statement piece, or a constellation

• A statement piece with quiet company. One piece carries the ear, often in the conch, which has room for clusters, halos and sculptural designs. Everything around it is smaller, so it has space to be seen.
• A constellation. A run of small pieces across the ear, none louder than the others: a fine cluster in the tragus, small solitaires up the rim, a flat end on the forward helix.

What doesn't work is two loud pieces fighting for attention on one ear. If you love two big pieces, I'd rather give them an ear each.

Mixing yellow and white gold

The gold in the case is solid 14k, in yellow or white. Mixing them works when it's decided, not drifted into: one metal for most of the ear with the other as a single point of contrast, or one metal per ear. What reads as accidental is yellow and white alternating up the rim for no reason.

Keeping every piece BVLA helps: the same gold, the same finish and the same standard, across pieces added years apart. If the stone you want isn't in the case, any BVLA design can be made to order in another stone or gold in about six weeks, through BVLA Bespoke.

Building over months, and to a budget

With each spot healed before the next goes in beside it, a whole ear runs from about a year and a half to about three years. That's what makes a budget work, because the spending arrives a piece at a time, each priced as you choose it.

Tell me what you'd like to spend and the plan is built to it, with the money in the piece the ear is built around. If you already own a gold piece you want in the plan, fitting it at the piercing is the piece plus $40.

Piercings you already have

If your ear already has piercings that sit at an angle, or don't line up with the ear you want, the answer is usually to change the piece, plan around it, or pierce again in the right place. A second look is twenty minutes and $30, which comes off a piercing or a piece fitted the same day. If we pierced it, a look costs nothing.

The Designed Ear

When you want the whole thing planned, that's The Designed Ear: an hour at the table with me. We hold gold up to your ear until we can both see where it's going. Then the whole ear is drawn: every spot, the order they go in, and the BVLA piece for each, with any piercings you already have in the drawing too.

It's $150, and the $150 comes off your first piercing. You take the drawing home, and it's yours whether you have anything done that day or not. The first piercings go in the same day or at the next visit, in the gold chosen for the plan. That's what we mean by the right spot, a piece you love, and all the time it takes.

I do every one myself, Wednesday to Sunday, at 389 Parnell Road, Parnell. Book it here, or call 09 949 0940 to talk it through first.