Texting your tattoo clients: the hours, the caps, and all 51 state rules

You want to text last week's client about a flash day. 32 states have their own rule about when you may send that, on top of the federal one, and 6 of them close a whole day of the week. One window clears all 51: 10am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, in the client's local time. Here is every state's rule, read at the statute, with the section linked next to it.

The reason the answer is not just "the federal 8am to 9pm" is that state legislatures have spent the last 5 years writing texting law. Oregon's took effect on 2026-01-01. Maryland's on 2024-01-01. Pennsylvania's starts on 2026-10-18, and it is the narrowest weekday window in the country: 9am to 7pm, and never on a Sunday or a legal holiday. 4 states cap you at 3 messages a day. Maine caps you at one every 8 hours.

This is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. Your local health department has the final word on your tattoo consent form, and a lawyer has it on this. Ask them, and keep your consent records.

The one window that clears all 51

26 states set a window of their own. 10 of them write the federal 8am to 9pm into state law with a state penalty behind it. 7 close at 8pm. 3 open at 9am and close at 8pm. 3 run 9am to 9pm. Then the 3 outliers that decide the answer: Kentucky does not open until 10am, Pennsylvania closes at 7pm from October, and Maine closes at 5pm and bars weekends entirely.

Add the day closures and the arithmetic falls out. 10am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, in the client's local time, clears every state that sets a window. If you never text a client outside a weekday afternoon, no state's clock is a problem for you.

A looser rule works nearly as well. 9am to 8pm on a weekday clears 23 of the 26. The 3 it misses are Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Maine, and if you have clients in those states, run to the tighter one.

One more thing about the clock: 18 of the 26 measure it at the client's end, not yours, and 7 more say bare "local time" without saying whose. An area code is not where somebody lives, and nothing at your counter tells you a client moved to Oregon. Mississippi is the one state that goes the other way: its window is 8am to 8pm Central Standard Time by statute, a fixed clock rather than anybody's local one.

No row below carries a *: every rule here was read at the statute text itself, never at a law firm's summary of it. A state whose own law adds nothing shows the federal rule instead, so no cell is blank.

6 states close a whole day

A window says nothing about the calendar, and 6 states shut one:

• Pennsylvania: no Sunday, no legal holiday, from 2026-10-18.
• Utah: no Sunday, no legal holiday, and prior express consent is the only thing that lifts it. An existing customer relationship does not.
• Louisiana: no Sunday, no legal holiday.
• Mississippi: no Sunday, and its own text says the rule still binds a solicitor who is exempt from the rest of the article, so the existing-customer escape does not reach it.
• South Dakota: no Sunday.
• Maine: weekdays only.

Sunday afternoon is when a shop with an idea reaches for its client list, which is exactly why this is worth knowing before you build the habit.

5 states count your messages

Florida, Maryland, Oklahoma and Oregon all cap you at 3 messages to one person in 24 hours on the same subject. The 4 sections are nearly word for word the same, which is what happens when 4 legislatures copy one bill. Maine is the strict one: one solicitation call to a number every 8 hours.

3 a day sounds generous until you remember it counts every message on the same subject from any number you own. In practice a shop that sends more than one marketing text a week is training its clients to reply STOP, so the cap is rarely the binding constraint. It is the one with a dollar figure attached, though: Florida and Maryland both let a client sue for $500 a message, trebled if you knew.

Your own clients: the exemption that decides everything

Almost every state's rule carves out a message to somebody you already do business with. That carve-out is the whole ballgame for a tattoo shop, because your list is nothing but people who sat in your chair. But it varies more than anything else in this table, and in a few states it does not lift the clock at all.

The widest: Oklahoma exempts a shop from its entire act, hours and cap included, both because you are soliciting previous purchasers and because you are a retail business open at least a year. Connecticut writes the carve-out into the definition of a solicitation, so a message to an existing customer is not covered at all until they tell you to stop. Oregon lifts both the window and the 3-a-day cap for a client you tattooed in the last 18 months.

The narrowest: Florida's exemption list says in its opening line that it does not reach the hours or the cap, so both survive it. Maryland's exemption covers only a message "initially intended for informational purposes only" that turns into a solicitation on the client's own question, which an offer is not. Utah's does not touch the Sunday ban. Virginia's is scoped to a different section than the hours. Indiana has no general existing-customer exemption at all, and its window is 9am to 8pm.

And where an exemption does exist, the clock on it runs faster than you would guess. Missouri gives you 180 days from the last business contact. Mississippi and Louisiana 6 months. Pennsylvania 12 months. North Carolina 18 months, North Dakota 24. A client who last sat 7 months ago is outside Missouri's exemption and back under the full rule.

3 states where the hours are not the question

California, Rhode Island and Washington do not set texting hours. They ban the message and then let it back in.

California and Rhode Island use the same sentence, because Rhode Island copied it: a business may not transmit a text message advertisement to a cell phone, unless it has an existing relationship with the subscriber and the subscriber is offered an option not to receive them. The opt-out is not a courtesy there. It is the condition that makes the message lawful.

Washington is stricter and has been since 2003. No person conducting business in the state may initiate or assist in the transmission of a commercial text message to a Washington cell number, at all, unless the subscriber "has clearly and affirmatively consented in advance." No existing-customer escape, and $100 a message.

The rule reaches whoever presses send

31 of the 32 state rules are written to catch the sender, not just the shop. Florida and Oklahoma say "make or knowingly allow to be made." Maryland and a dozen others say "make or cause to be made." Washington says "initiate or assist in the transmission." Pennsylvania says "causing to be initiated."

Hiring a texting service does not move the duty off the shop, and it does not move it off the service either. If you use one, the window and the cap belong in the software, not in a note taped to the counter.

The federal floor, which never goes away

19 states add nothing to it, and under every one of the other 32 it is still the floor. 3 things:

• 8am to 9pm, the client's local time. 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(c)(1) sets the hours, and subsection (e) carries them onto text messages to a wireless number, which is the only kind of number a client writes on a waiver.
• Prior express written consent for a marketing text. A signed agreement that names who may text, says the messages may be automated, and says the person does not have to agree in order to buy anything. That last clause is the one shops miss: a tick that a client cannot get tattooed without is not consent to marketing.
• STOP, honored in 10 business days. Since 2025-04-11 a client may revoke "in any reasonable manner", which includes replying with a word that is not STOP. 10 business days is the ceiling. Same day is the version nobody argues with.

What to do on Monday

Ask separately. The yes to marketing texts belongs on its own tick with its own date, never folded into the box a client has to accept to get tattooed. That one change is worth more than every window on this page, because without it the hours are academic.

Then keep to a weekday afternoon, keep the count low, and honor a stop the day it arrives. 21 of the 32 state rules let the client sue, so the first notice you get is a letter, and by then they have kept the message.

Every state's page on this site carries its own texting section now, with the statute quoted and linked: start at your own, and check the states your out-of-town clients went home to.