The Rose and Skull tattoos are adored by so many people around the globe. This style has been around for a long time, but have you ever thought about its deeper meaning? Well, roses and skulls are often linked together in tattoos to show the duality of life and death, love and hate. Both roses and skulls are symbols of death and ecstasy. These are well-liked patterns that tattoo artists may alter for everyone. The concept of showing duality is quite intriguing and now even I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of this design. But, before I do that, let us quickly take a look at some of the cool “rose & skull” tattoo designs, their meanings, and where these will suit your body.
Meaning of Rose and Skull Tattoo Designs
Contents (Click to Jump)
Duality of Life: A skull is a sign of death, whereas a rose signifies love and fertility. Combining them creates something like a yin/yang symbol. The combination symbolizes a powerful resistance to loss or a violent rejection of the end.
Male & Female Power: Roses used to be a representation of male power, but throughout modern history, their associations with women have grown. Since skulls are seen as masculine, putting them together could mean that the energies of both sexes are coming together.
Fading Love: Thanks in large part to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, a tattoo of a rose with petals falling off symbolizes fading love. A skull with a dead rose on it could mean that male energy has won over feminine energy.
Struggle: The rose and the skull are two polar opposites and hence the struggle between them is constant.
Ideas for Rose and Skull Tattoo Designs
Colored and Shading: Colorful or grayscale tattoos are common. When it comes to vivid tattoos, red flowers are often used to outline a dark, darkened skull. You may also request yellow or pink flowers from your artist. The vacant eye sockets and bared teeth of the skull are typical features. Roses might be tough to depict in grayscale tattoos, but it is not impossible. The flower has a unique form, and the stem with thorns may enhance the clarity of the picture. The flowers look to be dead in these tattoos, giving them a mournful tone.
Single Rose: It is the most common rose and skull tattoo to feature a human skull with a single rose on it. No one has a clue as to when or how this fad began. But this has been the norm ever since and is the most popular way in which this tattoo appears on your body.
Sugar Skull: Some people like to replace the normal human skull with a sugar skull that represents the celebration of the dead ones in Mexican culture.
Realistic Skull and Rose Tattoo: Many people like to add the deathly look of the skull and the beauty of the rose flower in a very realistic way. This is done primarily to evoke real feelings.
Watercolor Effect: Wherever there are flowers, watercolors can be considered a great option. This is because of the fact that they look aesthetically more pleasing.
Neo-Traditional and American Traditional Designs: The rose and skull can easily be made using these methods to enhance the loo since these styles have bolder outlines and brighter colors.
Other Elements: The skull and the rose tattoo can have other gothic elements that would enhance its mysterious nature of it in various ways. For example, it can have a snake or dagger as its symbol.
Where Should You Get Rose and Skull Tattoo Designs
For Women
- Ankle
- Wrist
- Finger Spaces
- Hands
- Shoulder Blades
- Behind the Ears
For Men
- Chest
- Biceps
- Legs
- Neck
- Back
- Forearms
List of Rose and Skull Tattoo Designs & Meanings
- Partly Colored Rose and Skull Arm Tattoo
Amidst the beautifully colored rose is the skull with fiery red eyes. A fine representation of “good in the bad” and vice-versa.
- Crowned Skull with Red Rose Arm Tattoo
The representation of two opposing ideals is a central tenet of the art of skull rose tattoos. Here’s a crowned skull with a glorious rose hanging around its neck appearing to be sideways.
- Colorful Frame, Rose & Skull Arm Tattoo
In this design, the skull is beautifully donning roses around the head like a tiara. This is a representation that signifies that when we think everything around us is negative, we forget that with every bad situation there comes some hidden good, which we discover later.
- Black Rose & Skull Arm Tattoo
Although the concept is quite simple there are so many creative ways to portray it. In this tattoo, a simply illustrated black and white tattoo shows roses with a skull in the middle of the. To me, it looks like it conveys a message that the bad balances all the good that comes into our lives. What do you think?
- Open-Mouthed Skull with Rose Arm Tattoo
Here we see a dramatic open-mouthed skull with a beautiful rose making its way away from the canines. The beauty of this tattoo is seen in the detailing of teeth and roses, which are done with great perfection by the tattoo artist.
- Detailed Skull & Rose Sleeve Tattoo
This is a very bold choice for a tattoo and represents a sequence of roses, and skulls quite surprising you could spot a butterfly in between that has a skull embedded into it. It’s a beautiful concept of duality presented at large. Go for it if you’re courageous enough to roll it up your sleeve!
- Gothic Skull & Rose Arm Tattoo
This tattoo shows a very compelling design where the expressions and design elements going around the skull are quite detailed. Truly an attention-grabbing tattoo and looks magnificent!
- Geometrical Skull & Rose Arm Tattoo
The latest trendsetters are geometric tattoo designs and they are increasingly gaining acceptance. Along with additional dots, dashes, and shading, they have symmetrical lines that form the final pattern. If you want something unique, a geometric design is a great option for a rose and skull tattoo.
- Illustrative Style Colored Skull & Rose Arm Tattoo
Rose and skull tattoos come in a wide variety of designs. When it comes to full-color tattoos, you’ll most often see traditional and old-school tattoos. Dramatic pictures and powerful black lines are the hallmarks of this style.
- Tribal Style Colored Skull & Rose Arm Tattoo
Here’s a tribal tattoo design. Artists may have a great time creating a skull in the same style as they include repetitive and interlocking patterns. Like an outer boundary, this beautiful colored pattern in a cyan look-alike color is adding glory to this tattoo. This one requires you to research a lot and find a tattoo artist who’s an expert with multi-colored tattoos.
- Colored Rose & Skull Face Forearm Tattoo
This is a colored rose and skull tattoo but somehow, the skull here isn’t inked the usual way. It gives a slight impression of the face of a dinosaur amidst the beautiful roses. Such designs can offer a lot of versatility and freedom to be creative as long as one can find meaning in it.
- Black & White Roses With Skull Shading Forearm Forearm Tattoo
With plenty of creative ways to show shading, black-and-white tattoos look amazing. Here, the detailing of petals, leaves, and minimal red ink at the bottom gives so much room to spot art.
- Black & White Roses With Skull Forearm Tattoo
This is a standard-looking roses & skull tattoo that will look very attractive when placed on the forearm. Quite easy to comprehend, beautiful to look at, and a bold statement piece!
- Minimal Colored Roses With Skull Forearm Tattoo
Well, roses need not be red right? So, taking a break from the mundane, this tattoo shows roses in two color combinations with slight gray shading in between. In the middle is the skull taking its free space and acting as a connector of the two positive sides. Quite beautifully created, and gives a new view to the eyes.
- Element-Based Tribal Roses With Skull Forearm Tattoo
There’s so much room for personal expression in the skull and rose tattoo design, that every style or application technique can be utilized successfully. This is an amalgamation of multiple design elements coming together to present beauty rooted in meaning.
- Widespread Roses With Skull Chest Tattoo
Symbolizing life and death, love and vitality, the concept of roses and skulls is shown in a very crisp manner here. A spread-out piece of art inked on the chest is quite a brilliant view. It gives you a sense of exclusivity to have something inked at a body part that is most visible to just you.
- Wings with Roses, Eye, Elements & Skull Chest Tattoo
This not-so-old-school tattoo shows your favorite elements all coming together at once. The beauty of tattoos is that they allow you space to be creative and represent every element that you connect with. So, what makes sense to you, you get it inked. Just like how we see here, every element has individual meaning and they all combined look aesthetic!
- Devil Eyes Skull & Roses Chest Tattoo
Eyes can talk a lot and yes, when inked right, they speak volumes. This is a glorious piece of art where a splash of red color in the eyes is making a lot of difference. Undoubtedly, this a piece of labor this one is!
- Gothic Colored Skull & Roses Chest Tattoo
Presenting a variation, this tattoo exhibits quite a non-traditional view and highlights the concept of life and death. The choice of colors and quality of ink has made a huge difference in this one. The bright reds and yellows are placed quite rightly with the black color. A good choice if you’re planning to go all retro for your next tattoo based on this concept.
- Divided Skull & Roses Arm Tattoo
Discovering your meanings to relate to a tattoo is the best approach. Like, with this one I could derive a meaning that the finely divided roses and skull represent a thin line of difference between the good and bad in our lives. It is when we cross this thin line, we make all the difference. Brilliantly designed and inked by the tattoo artist, this could be a suitable choice for women and men who want to keep it subtle and not so element-heavy.
- Awesome Skull & Roses Tattoo on Forearm
The skull and rose tattoo here is a pretty neat design. The outlines look quite nice and very fine.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
The skull and the rose tattoo are made with bold outlines and shading effects. This tattoo also has a banner that says ‘memento mori’ which suggests that everyone has to die someday.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This is a beautiful skull and rose tattoo with an inverted triangle that represents feminine energy.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This skull is terminating from the rose which looks pretty nice to look at.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull and the rose tattoo are added with a crow and with the word ‘Balance.’
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Neck
This design is a pretty great one on the neck and the shoulder. It looks pretty awesome made with such realistic effects.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
The skull tattoo is added with blue rose and yellow flowers that look amazing. They are a great part of the overall aesthetics.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Neck
The neck is one of the most popular places to get a skull and rose tattoo.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
The upper arm is one of the places where people love getting the skull and rose tattoo in general.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull and rose tattoo here is also added with some spider webs to continue with the spooky tradition.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Shoulder
The skull and rose tattoo here is made in a neo-traditional way which looks quite pretty!
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Chest
This is an inverted skull tattoo along with the rose that looks pretty nice. It is overall a nice concept and looks unique.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull and the rose tattoo are added with some amazing floral designs.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The wearer has made a skull set – a pair of skulls and a knife on one hand and a pair of skulls on hand and rose on the other.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
The rose seems to be popping out of the skull eye; quite an amazing idea.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull seems to have its jaw locked and dislocated. Although, the whole design is pretty nice with a bit of realistic touch to itself.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull is holding the rose in its mouth and looks like a sketch.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This skull and the rose tattoo is a pretty nice one with beautiful colors added to break the monotonous black and grey colors.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
The best part about the skull and rose tattoo is that they look quite creative when some colors are used in the rose.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The watercolor that has been used on the rose gives it a very different look.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The rose that has been made looks like a geometrical figure and is a super cool design.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Wrist
The rose and the skull represent the two opposites in every aspect of life.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The rose and the skull is tattooing the two most popular design elements into one.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Body
Separately, the rose and the skull have very symbolic interpretations. Together, on the other hand, they represent something even more unique.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
The rose and the skull tattoo represent the different aspects of life – death is inevitable, beauty is temporary, life is to be lived only once, etc.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This rose and the skull tattoo has very definite elements attached to them. The bright colors set out the tone.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
The rose and skull tattoo here is done in a neo-traditional manner that looks pretty interesting.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Back
The rose and skull tattoo is hyper-realistic and looks super amazing with the smooth shading texture given here.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
That skull is smokin’ hot if you know what I mean 😉
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
Here the skull looks hyper-realistic with the hand of a woman who is holding the flower delicately.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Chest
The darker shades at the corner mixed with the red and yellow colors are pretty attractive.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The blue and the golden colors have a stark contrast!
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Hand
That’s quite a small and cute rose and skull tattoo, isn’t it? It fits perfectly on the hand and looks novel.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
Here, the skull seems to have a rose headband along with roses in his jaw.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Chest
This is a whole theme going on on the chest of the wearer – the sugar skull with the roses and other elements like the little clock.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
This is a beautiful design with amazing gothic hanging from below. This makes sense too, the rose and skull look pretty gothic.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Body
This is a great dagger tattoo that has been made on the upper ribs. It looks compact.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Chest
Getting a rose and skull tattoo does not mean that we have to get a huge design, but designs like this one that are small and compact also make a lot of fo sense.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
Many people like to make an outline tattoo on their skin which looks pretty nicely done with light strokes of black.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
Here, the tattoo is pretty small in size and is done in the American traditional tattoo style.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The rose and skull tattoo is done in the American traditional tattoo style. The colors are super bright while the outline is bold.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This rose and skull tattoo is done with stark colors and jet-black ink to give it an intense look!
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Chest
This rose and skull tattoo is embedded in the web and done with black and grey shading effects.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Chest
This rose and skull tattoo has a lot of other elements attached to it like the Illuminati eye which stands for mysteries of life.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
This skull tattoo is a pretty intriguing one because it seems like a flower pot rather than anything else.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Shoulder
The rose and skull tattoo is made to look like a portrait or a reflection. The colors in this tattoo are very bright and attractive.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The rose and skull tattoo here is also drawn with an hourglass that looks nice. However, it has a much more significant meaning attached to it – It shows the duality of life with the aspect of time in it.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
This skull has quite a tribal vibe going on with the jewels and the patterns drawn on it.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
The skull is covered with multiple kinds of flowers with various colors that look quite nice overall.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
The rose and skull tattoo looks quite nice on the back of the leg which fits the area perfectly.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on On Arm
The wearer has made a beautiful skull tattoo with a whole skeleton who is holding a rose in her hand.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
The small skull and a rose tattoo near the ankle look pretty nice. It is small and adjustable.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
This is an outline tattoo that has been made here on the arm. It is perfect for the person who wants to go very simple.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The blue skull and the pink rose looks very contrasting!
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This skull and the rose tattoo are unique because of the addition of other elements like wasps. The wearer has tried to create a whole theme on the arm that represents the dual nature of a human being with death and life.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
In this skull and rose tattoo, the skull is wearing a beautiful crown on its head!
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
Besides just the rose and the skull, there is also the snake which represents evil nature.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The black shading here is quite intense and paints a very dark image.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
This tattoo seems to have a beautiful watercolor effect which makes it look like a painting.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This is a geometrical representation with a beautiful black and grey shading effect given to the skull and the rose.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The rose is coming out from the mouth and the eye of the skull! It is such a stylistic feature.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
It seems like the skull and the rose is coming out from a single root – the same existence and it speaks a lot about the duality of life.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
Here, we don’t just have some beautiful roses but also other kinds of flowers that add to the aesthetics of the skull and rose tattoo and probably add to the meaning too.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull is added with some unusual rose flowers – these flowers are purple and pink in shade.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The bright roses have covered almost the whole arm and look quite nice. The skulls are part of the upper arm only.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
The beautiful shading effect makes this design look super realistic.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The outline of the skull and rose tattoo makes it look very minimal and a great design for people who do not want anything out of the blue.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
The skull and rose tattoo represent a kind of dual nature that persists in human beings too.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull has a spider leg which seems quite different and unique.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Thigh
Adding a beautiful shaded pink color to the design is quite amazing with the black and grey skull.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Neck
The neck is a great idea to get the skull and a rose tattoo as long as the size of the tattoo fits the area well.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull and the rose tattoo represent both beauty and death.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The skull seems to be engulfed in the roses from all sides.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
Shaded designs are very popular when it comes to skull and rose tattoos.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Shoulder
The skull seems to be cracked from many ends and this might signify the brokenness of the human soul.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Leg
The rose seems to be growing up from inside the skull and done in beautiful shading effect.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
This tattoo has half the skull face and the other half is that of a rose. The rose could have some red color added to make it look a bit more attractive.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
This is a neo-traditional tattoo of the skull and the rose which is given by a web background.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
The neat and fine lines in the tattoo are super nice to look at as it makes the whole tattoo quite neat.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
The rose is made inside the mouth of the skill which seems to have sharp canines!
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Upper Arm
The flower and skull have a beautiful shading effect that looks like a pencil stroke.
- Skull & Roses Tattoo on Arm
The tattoo of the skull is made to look beautiful with an amazing color scheme here. The bright colors don’t make the look of the design realistic but rather give it a caricaturish vibe.
