After 6 weeks of healing how long can you leave a lip piercing out before it closes?

I don't know why people ask these questions, if you don't want the piercing visible then don't get it pierced. Now that I have covered that, let's answer the question. Professional body piercers don't consider a piercing healed until it's at least a year old. Your body works on priorities and once the body has a good hold on healing the piercing it backs off on the process to deal with other things like cuts, colds and infections. So the healing process slows down as the risk to the body decreases. Taking the jewellery out of the piercing even for a few hours after six weeks of healing will tell the body to start closing the piercing. If there is any way you can avoid removing the jewellery that would be far better than taking the jewellery out. If you were at six months or even three months with the piercing being left to heal that would be much better. To take it out now I would say you have a 2 hour time limit before the piercing starts to close to the point you will be tearing the piercing open trying to reinsert the jewellery.