Libra tattoo ideas, meaning and designs

What people want from a Libra tattoo

The traits astrologers attach to Libra are fairness, charm, an eye for how things look and a long pause before any decision. Clients want the first three in the design and tend to laugh about the fourth. In practice that means clean geometry, careful spacing and a lot of time spent on the stencil placement, which suits the sign.

Venus rules Libra, so roses and other Venus imagery turn up often. A rose hanging from one pan of the scales is a common composition and it solves the level beam problem at the same time, since the weight gives the beam a reason to tilt. Anything hanging from one pan does the same job, a stone, a feather, a key.

The glyph, the scales and the old claw stars

A Libra glyph lives or dies on its straight line. Freehand it and any curve shows, especially over the curve of a wrist or a collarbone. Ask the artist to stencil it and to check it against the natural line of the body, since a level mark on a sloping surface looks tilted and a slightly tilted one often looks level.

The constellation is a quiet quadrilateral with no bright stars. Zubeneschamali is the brightest at magnitude 2.6 and, oddly, outshines the alpha star Zubenelgenubi. Both names mean claw, northern and southern, because these stars were once counted as part of Scorpius before Libra was split off as its own sign. That history is a good reason to place Libra and Scorpio pieces near each other on the body.

Ways people build it

• Glyph alone, 2 to 4 cm, wrist, ankle or behind the ear
• Scales with a tilted beam, 8 to 15 cm, forearm or upper back
• Constellation quadrilateral, 10 cm or more so the faint stars stay apart
• Scales with a rose on one pan, neo traditional, 15 cm and up
• Glyph set into a geometric frame, blackwork, 5 to 8 cm

Size, placement and pain

The glyph works small: 2 to 4 cm on the inner wrist at about 4 out of 10 for pain, behind the ear at 5, the back of the neck at 6. A shop minimum of $90 to $150 covers it. Because it is horizontal, it also suits the collarbone and the underside of the forearm better than most glyphs do.

Scales need height as well as width, since the beam and the two hanging pans make a T shape. The outer forearm, the upper back and the thigh all take it at 8 to 15 cm. An ornate set of scales with a rose or a blindfolded figure is three to five hours of work, which lands around $350 to $700 in most American cities.

Styles that suit it, and how it ages

Geometric, minimalist and fine line all suit Libra, and ornamental work suits the scales, where chains and pans take decorative detail well. Neo traditional handles a scales and rose composition. The style to think twice about is watercolor, since a design this dependent on clean edges loses its shape as washes fade unevenly.

Straight lines age in a specific way: they thicken, and a thickening line under 2 cm can start to look like a smudge rather than a beam. Keep the glyph at 2.5 cm or larger if you want it sharp at fifty. Chains on a scales piece need 2 mm links at minimum. A licensed artist will size both to the area you choose.