The Most Popular Tattoo Designs In Illinois And Iowa Aren’t Creative

Tattoos are supposed to be unique, right?

Whether they're done great or if they're awful, we get tattoos to have something specific to us, be it a night of bad decisions or remembering something special.

Data from Google looked at each state's most searched tattoo designs from July 2024-July 2025. They're not super fancy or unusual at all.

The top "...tattoo designs" searched included:

• Flower
• Rose (evidently it's own category despite being a flower)
• Cross
• Name
• Heart

Overall, the Midwest is pretty split on ideal tattoos. Iowa's most popular tattoo are flowers, and Illinois prefers roses. Again, kinda the same thing but not quite, since roses are so highly associated with love.

Minnesota likes heart tattoo designs and Wisconsin's popular tattoo designs are names (which is for sure a category you have to be careful with).

But the good news with all of those being more basic tattoos is that it leaves a lot of room for creativity and add-ons.

Popular tattoo placement locations include the forearm, wrist, thigh, ribs, and back. As I found out after I got my two, it's not a good idea to get a tattoo on a bony area of your body. It kinda hurts.

One reason flower designs are so popular is that there's more to the flower than just being pretty. Often, the name of the flower has a special origin. Like amaryllis could come from a Greek term that means 'sparkle' or 'shine'.

You can come up with a tattoo design for most anything. Look up designs you kinda like and work with a good tattoo artist to come up with variations you can pick.