Scars range widely in appearance, from flat white lines to raised, discolored bumps to sunken pits in the skin. What yours looks like depends on the type of injury, where it is on your body, how long ago it formed, and your skin tone. Most scars share a few visual traits: they’re smoother and shinier than surrounding skin, they lack hair and pores, and their color changes over time as they mature.
Why Scars Look Different From Normal Skin
The reason a scar never quite matches the skin around it comes down to how the body rebuilds after an injury. Normal skin has collagen fibers arranged in a basket-weave pattern, with most fibers running parallel to the surface but some angling in other directions. Scar tissue, by contrast, lays down collagen in a more uniform, parallel arrangement. This structural difference is what gives scars their characteristic flat, shiny look and slightly different texture when you run a finger over them.
Scar tissue also lacks the structures that make normal skin look and feel the way it does. Hair follicles, sweat glands, and oil glands are destroyed during the healing process and don’t regenerate. The follicle openings close over, leaving skin that appears smooth and somewhat glossy. This is why scarred areas don’t grow hair, don’t tan evenly, and can feel drier than the skin around them.
How Scar Color Changes Over Time
Fresh scars are almost always a bright, beefy red. Over the following weeks, that red shifts to a purplish-red, then gradually deepens to a dull, darker purple-red. Finally, over a period of roughly 12 months, the color fades to pink, then to white or a shade lighter or darker than your natural skin tone. This timeline varies from person to person, but the general red-to-purple-to-faded progression is consistent.
On darker skin tones, scars are more likely to leave behind noticeable color changes even after they’ve fully matured. Darker skin produces more melanin, and any injury or inflammation can disrupt how that melanin is made, transported, and distributed. The result is either darker patches (hyperpigmentation) or lighter patches (hypopigmentation) that can persist long after the scar itself has flattened and softened. These color shifts aren’t the scar itself but rather the skin’s pigment response to the original injury.
Flat and Fine-Line Scars
The most common type of scar is a flat, fine line. This is what you typically see after a surgical incision or a clean cut heals normally. It starts out red or pink and raised slightly above the skin, then gradually flattens and fades over months. In its mature form, it looks like a thin pale line, sometimes barely visible, sometimes a shade lighter than the surrounding skin. These scars are soft to the touch and don’t restrict movement.
Raised Scars: Hypertrophic and Keloid
Some scars grow thicker and more prominent than a simple line. These fall into two categories that look similar at first glance but behave quite differently.
Hypertrophic scars are raised and firm but stay within the boundaries of the original wound. They look like a thickened ridge sitting on top of the skin, often with a slightly ropy or bumpy texture. They tend to develop within weeks of the injury and may gradually flatten on their own over a year or two. The collagen in these scars is arranged in a wavy, fragmented pattern, which gives them a denser, less flexible feel than normal skin.
Keloid scars extend beyond the edges of the original wound, sometimes dramatically. They project above the surrounding skin and can take on a round, oval, or oblong shape. Some keloids develop irregular, claw-like projections that spread outward from the original injury site. On the chest and limbs, keloids are often raised with a flat top surface, wider at the base than at the peak. Their collagen is loosely packed and randomly oriented, which contributes to their firm, rubbery texture. Unlike hypertrophic scars, keloids don’t tend to improve on their own and can continue growing over time. People with darker skin tones are more likely to develop both hypertrophic and keloid scars.
Sunken Scars: Ice Pick, Boxcar, and Rolling
Not all scars are raised. Atrophic scars sit below the level of surrounding skin, creating visible depressions. These are most commonly associated with acne but can result from chickenpox or other conditions that damage deeper layers of skin. They come in three distinct shapes.
Ice pick scars are the most common, making up 60 to 70 percent of atrophic acne scars. They’re narrow, V-shaped pits that are deeper than they are wide, extending down into the deeper layers of skin like a small puncture. From the surface, they look like enlarged pores or tiny holes.
Boxcar scars are wider, with round or oval shapes and sharply defined vertical edges. Think of them as shallow craters with distinct walls. They’re the next most common type after ice picks.
Rolling scars are the broadest and shallowest of the three. They have sloping, gradual edges rather than sharp drop-offs, which creates an uneven, undulating texture across the skin. You can sometimes make rolling scars temporarily disappear by stretching the skin taut, which distinguishes them from the other two types.
Contracture Scars
Burns and other injuries that destroy large areas of skin can produce contracture scars. These form when the scar tissue matures, thickens, and tightens, pulling the surrounding skin inward. Visually, contracture scars look tight and shiny, sometimes with a waxy or leathery texture. The skin appears pulled taut, and you can often see the tension in how the surrounding skin bunches or puckers at the edges.
The defining feature of a contracture scar isn’t just how it looks but how it limits movement. When these scars cross a joint (the inside of the elbow, the front of the neck, the fingers), they can physically prevent the area from extending fully. The skin feels hard and inflexible, and the restricted range of motion is often visible even at rest.
Stretch Marks
Stretch marks are a form of scarring that develops from within, when skin stretches faster than it can adapt. In their early phase, they appear as slightly swollen, reddish or purplish lines running perpendicular to the direction of skin tension. These are sometimes called striae rubrae. Over time, they lighten to white or flesh-colored and become flatter and less conspicuous. In their mature phase, they look like faint, slightly indented streaks with a texture that’s smoother and thinner than the surrounding skin.
The color progression of stretch marks mirrors that of external scars: red or purple when new, fading to white or silver as they age. On darker skin, they may appear darker than the surrounding tone initially before eventually lightening. They never fully disappear, but mature stretch marks can become subtle enough to blend with surrounding skin, especially on lighter complexions.
What Affects How Your Scar Will Look
Several factors determine where your scar falls on the spectrum from barely visible to prominently raised or discolored. Location matters: scars on the chest, shoulders, and upper back are more prone to becoming hypertrophic or keloid, while scars on the eyelids and inner forearms tend to heal with minimal visibility. Age plays a role too, as younger skin produces more collagen and is more likely to generate raised scars.
The direction and depth of the wound influence the final appearance. Clean, shallow cuts that align with your skin’s natural tension lines heal as thin, flat lines. Wounds that cut across tension lines, that involve tearing rather than cutting, or that get infected during healing produce wider, more irregular scars. How a wound was closed also matters: surgical incisions closed with careful stitching typically scar less visibly than wounds left to heal on their own.
Genetics are perhaps the biggest wildcard. Some people are simply more prone to aggressive scarring regardless of wound care. If you’ve formed keloids or thick hypertrophic scars in the past, you’re more likely to do so again with future injuries.