Matching & Group Tattoos in Hanoi: A Booking Guide

Getting tattooed together — as a couple, with your best friend, or as a whole travel group — is one of the most common requests we get, and also one of the most commonly mishandled by studios that aren’t set up for it. A matching or group tattoo isn’t just “the same booking, more people.” It needs its own planning: who’s drawing what, how many chairs you actually need, and whether “matching” really means identical. Here’s how to plan one properly in Hanoi.

Start with what “matching” actually means to your group

Before you contact any studio, get specific — “matching tattoos” covers a few genuinely different ideas, and naming which one you want saves a lot of back-and-forth later:

• Identical designs — the exact same small piece on everyone, just resized to fit each person. Simplest to plan and quote.
• Complementary designs — related but not identical: two halves of one image, the same symbol drawn in each person’s own placement, or a shared motif (like a wave, a moon phase, or a set of coordinates) rendered slightly differently for each person.
• Same style, different subject — everyone picks their own design, but agrees on one style (all fine line, all black & grey) so the set feels cohesive as a group without anyone getting a design they didn’t choose.

None of these is “more correct” than another — but tell your artist which one you mean up front, because it changes how the designs are drafted.

How booking works for a group

A group session needs more coordination than a solo one, mainly around timing:

• One artist per person, working at the same time, if the studio has the chairs free and you want everyone done in one sitting. This is the fastest option but needs to be arranged in advance — it’s not something we can always accommodate as a walk-in.
• One artist, multiple people, sequential sessions — if you’d rather have one artist handle the whole group for design consistency, plan for a longer total visit, since each person’s session runs one after another.
• Split across two visits — for larger groups (five or more), splitting across two days is often more comfortable than everyone waiting around for hours on the first day.

Whichever way you go, tell us the group size and your preferred dates as early as you can — matching multiple chairs to one time slot is the part that needs the most lead time, more than the design work itself.

Designing for a group without losing what makes it personal

The best matching sets we’ve done balance two things that pull in opposite directions: looking clearly connected, and still feeling like each person’s own tattoo. A few things that help:

• Pick one shared element, not a whole finished design — a linework style, a specific line weight, a recurring symbol — and let placement and exact composition vary per person. Fully identical designs can look slightly “off” once resized to different body shapes anyway.
• Decide placement together, but don’t force identical placement. Matching wrist tattoos read very differently depending on wrist size and skin tone — what looks balanced on one person can look cramped on another. Discussing this with your artist during the joint consultation avoids a mismatch you’d only notice afterward.
• Bring one reference, not five conflicting ones. Groups often show up with each person’s own separate Pinterest board. It’s genuinely faster — and gives a better result — if the group agrees on one shared reference or mood board before the consultation, even a rough one.

Pricing for group bookings

GOAT Tattoo Studio offers 10% off for group bookings — couples, friends, or larger travel groups booking together. Beyond the discount, the same pricing logic from our full price guide applies per person: from $40 for anything under 30 minutes, $77/hour for larger custom pieces. A small matching symbol for four people, for example, is quoted and billed individually per person (each at the mini rate, minus the group discount) — not as one combined session — so everyone gets an exact price for their own piece before anyone sits down.

What to bring to a group consultation

• A shared reference or mood board, even a simple one, agreed on before you arrive.
• A clear idea of your placement preferences — even if they end up varying slightly per person, arriving with everyone’s rough intent saves consultation time.
• Your full group’s availability, including anyone who might need to reschedule — a partial group is harder to slot back in later than the same group booked from the start.
• Enough cash for your group’s total, or a plan for ATM withdrawals — see our price guide for a fuller note on payment in the Old Quarter.

What to expect at GOAT Tattoo Studio

We’ll walk through your shared reference together as a group first, before any individual consultations, so everyone’s on the same page about what “matching” means for your set specifically. From there, each person gets their own design consultation and confirmed price — matched in spirit, sized and placed for each person’s own body, with the group discount applied automatically across the booking.