Did you get a tattoo that you now regret? Good news! There’s a newer, faster, more effective treatment for erasing mistakes. It’s a laser procedure called R20, which stands for “repeat 20.” And instead of getting one pass with the laser per visit, you get 4 passes, every 20 minutes during your office visit. The 20 minutes being how long it takes for the “steam bubbles” created by the laser to be reabsorbed by your body.

With the current one-pass treatment, it can take months to erase a tattoo, and you don’t see much fading the first couple of times. But according to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, the R20 method fades tattoos 70 percent faster, and it doesn’t increase healing time, or make you more likely to scar.

But Dr. Mitchell Chasin warns that the success relies heavily on the equipment, and the expertise of the doctor. In other words, an experienced surgeon will know that if you have 3 different color inks in your tattoo, they need to use 3 different wavelengths of laser. It also depends on what color your tattoo is. Bottom line: Blue, black and red tattoos are easier to remove.

While tattoos that are brown, vivid green or vivid yellow are the hardest to get rid of. And of course, the treatments aren’t cheap. R20 laser tattoo removal costs about $600 a session. But make sure you go to a doctor of dermatology, and not an unlicensed tattoo-removal clinic. They may be cheaper, but if the laser operator doesn’t know what they’re doing, you could end up scarred for life.