However there are a few things to be considered before you go to a piercing studio to get a horizontal tongue piercing.

First off, due to the unique placement of the tongue ring, it’s very important to pierce the tongue horizontally in the right place. You see, when we speak our tongue bends in certain places more than others. So these areas are very important for speech creation and if the horizontal tongue piercing is performed there, speech damage is nearly unavoidable.

Secondly, the right length of the tongue barbell has to be chosen because you certainly need to avoid the endings of the body jewelry piece rubbing against your teeth. In a long run you can permanently damage your teeth and gums if you ignore this advice. So the best way to approach the horizontal tongue piercing would be choosing a barbell with endings which sit tightly in the surface of the tongue.

Thirdly, as you can imagine, it’s by far easier to pierce the tongue vertically than horizontally. Besides, the tongue consists of fiber-like muscles and it’s not really that painful to pierce the piercing needle through them from the top to the bottom.

But now imagine when you have to pierce the tongue across from the left to the right side. It’s going to be definitely a more painful process than the usual tongue piercing. On top of that it’s very important to avoid the major blood-vessels running through the tongue. And it’s again harder to spot them when piercing the tongue horizontally and the piercer will probably use a flashlight to spot the veins.

In other words, if you really want the horizontal tongue piercing, you need to understand that it’s not as innocent as it may look. Many piercers even don’t consider this type of a piercing a viable one because of the potential effect on the oral health.

Anyway, once you want to go for the horizontal tongue piercing, the main things to remember are:

go to a really professional piercing studio
make sure the piercer knows what he’s up to and that he’s a competent enough to perform the horizontal tongue piercing
choose a flexible tongue ring and make sure it’s the right length.

After the swelling is gone and the fresh horizontal tongue piercing is well healed you will certainly want to adjust the length of the tongue ring to make sure the beads on the either side sit tight in the tongue’s surface.

There is even PTFE body jewelry you can cut to size if you want so don’t save your money on your oral health!