Short answer: yes, and for a new piercing, you actually need to. The longer answer is that not every earring is designed to be slept in, and the wrong style can turn a normal night's sleep into a swollen, sore morning.
Here's what's actually going on and how to sleep comfortably without putting your piercing at risk.
Why You Shouldn't Take Earrings Out for a New Piercing
If you just got pierced, your piercer almost certainly told you to keep the jewelry in 24 hours a day, including while you sleep. That's not just a suggestion. A fresh piercing channel is essentially an open wound that's still forming a healed layer of skin around the jewelry. Take the earring out too early, even for a few hours, and that channel can start closing before you notice.
Most piercers recommend leaving initial jewelry in for the full healing period, which for lobes is around six to eight weeks and for cartilage can run six months to a year. Sleeping with it in the whole time is part of the deal.
The Real Risk Isn't Sleeping With Earrings, It's Sleeping With the Wrong Ones
This is where most of the confusion comes from. Sleeping with earrings in is fine. Sleeping with the wrong backing is what causes the pain, redness, and pressure sores people complain about.
Traditional butterfly backs and screw backs sit away from the ear at an angle, which is exactly the shape that catches on a pillow. Every time you roll over, that little metal disc gets pressed sideways into your ear, which is what causes that sharp poke feeling and can lead to swelling, bumps, or irritation if it happens night after night.
Hoops have the same problem for a different reason. They can shift, twist, and snag on hair or pillowcases, which puts pulling pressure directly on the piercing itself.
Why Flat Back Studs Are the Better Choice for Overnight Wear
Flat back and threadless earrings solve this by design. Instead of a backing that sticks out at an angle, the back sits flush against your skin. There's no disc to press into your ear and nothing raised for a pillow to catch on. That's the whole reason flat backs have become the standard recommendation for both new piercings and everyday overnight wear, not because they look nicer, though they do, but because the shape itself removes the pressure point.
Material matters here too. Implant grade titanium is lightweight and smooth against the skin, which matters more than people expect once you're talking about eight hours of contact every night. If you're prone to any irritation, a nickel-releasing metal rubbing against your ear all night is going to make it worse a lot faster than it would during the day.
Tips for Sleeping Comfortably With Any Piercing
A few small habits make a real difference, especially in the first few months:
Sleep on your back if you can. It keeps direct pressure off the ear entirely. If you're a committed side sleeper, this isn't realistic every night, but even alternating sides helps.
Use a travel pillow with a cutout, or a regular pillow with a shallow dent. Giving your ear somewhere to sit without being pressed flat reduces a lot of the overnight soreness people associate with new piercings.
Keep hair pulled back or braided at night if you have multiple piercings, especially anything on the upper ear. Loose hair is the number one cause of a snagged hoop or stud at 3am.
Do a saline rinse before bed during the healing period. Clean piercings heal faster and are less likely to get irritated overnight from trapped bacteria or product buildup.
When You Should Take Earrings Out to Sleep
If your piercing is fully healed, you generally have more flexibility, and some people do prefer to remove heavier statement pieces, like a large drop or dangle earring, before bed simply for comfort. That's a personal choice, not a safety requirement, as long as the piercing is healed and you're putting the jewelry back in within a reasonable window.
The one time you should always remove jewelry, healed or not, is if the piercing looks or feels infected: increasing redness, warmth, swelling, or discharge that isn't the normal clear healing fluid. In that case, don't just swap the jewelry, reach out to your piercer or a doctor.
The Bottom Line
You don't need to choose between sleeping well and keeping your piercing safe. The fix is almost always the jewelry itself. A flat back, threadless stud in implant grade titanium is built to be worn around the clock, which means your piercing keeps healing on schedule and you're not waking up with a sore ear from a backing that was never meant to be slept on in the first place.