Tempe, AZ Business Licensing & Operations: Tattoo & Body Modification (2026)

Section 3-424(A), Separation Requirements, keeps tattoo and body piercing establishments from clustering or landing near sensitive uses. A shop cannot locate within 1,320 feet, a quarter mile, measured in a straight line in any direction, from the lot line of another tattoo or piercing establishment. It also cannot sit within 500 feet of the lot line of a residential district, or within 500 feet of a charter school, private school, or public school providing elementary or secondary education, though instructional or vocational schools are excluded from that particular buffer.

An existing shop that already doesn't meet these distances as a legal nonconforming use can still relocate, but only to another tenant space on the same lot as its current space, and that move still has to go through the Use Permit process under Sections 6-308 and 6-903. Subsection B, General Regulations, requires every tattoo or body piercing business to hold a Use Permit approved under Section 6-308's criteria, on top of the zoning-separation test. Operationally, the shop must keep written sterilization and equipment-handling procedures on site and show all staff are trained in them; every practitioner needs current, on-premises proof of blood-borne pathogen and cross-contamination training; the shop must post written aftercare instructions and provide them to customers on request; and every hypodermic needle has to go immediately into a sharps container for pickup and disposal by an outside company rather than the shop's regular trash.