Highlights | Enhance your hair colour with the perfect highlights
Highlights, lowlights, babylights, ombre or balayage... The possibilities are endless. These popular hair colouring techniques have one goal in common: to make your hair come to life.
But what should you consider before venturing out into the world of highlights? Is it a DIY job? And how do you prevent your highlights from turning yellow? Read this great guide to the perfect highlights.
Highlights, babylights, ombre and balayage... What’s the difference?
Fortunately, it’s no longer necessary to look like a plucked chicken in a highlighting cap with holes like they did it in the 90s. Today they use more chique and gentle methods to give you those fabulous highlights. These new colouring techniques have introduced new trends too – and they have fancy French names.
The most popular ones, which are all variations of highlights, are:
Balayage
A freehand technique in which highlights are achieved by ‘painting’ sections of hair with a brush
Colour melt
Colour melt differs from balayage in the way the highlights are placed in order to blend rather than pop. It’s a colour technique that makes your hair look fantastic and naturally coloured. However, it is possible to stand out from the crowd by choosing a more vivid colour like this perfect peach. The colours are melting beautifully and are almost floating, right?
Highlights
The hair is coloured in strands using foil.
Babylights
Delicate highlights applied in small sections of hair to achieve a natural effect.
Highlights are perfect for you if...
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your hair is that typical shade of blonde called ‘dishwater blonde’ and you’d like to bring your hair to life with highlights or give it that sun-kissed, natural-looking style.
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your hair is fine or so thin that bleaching it is not an option, but you still want a lighter shade.
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you want a more vibrant look for your grey hair or want to ease the transition to grey hair.
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your hair is dark and you want to add a lighter, more breezy expression without it looking colour treated.
Can I make my own highlights at home?
Time and money are usually the reasons why many venture into DIY highlights. And even though a lot has happened with drugstore hair dyes over the last years, you still need to take your precautions before you go ahead with DIY highlights.
When dying your own hair it’s easy to choose the wrong colour because it will almost never be exactly the same as the one in the picture. If you’ve coloured your hair before or if it has been bleached by the sun or salt water, it may impact the results. You also risk having an allergic reaction, because there’s nobody there to guide you along the way.
If you want to achieve the perfect result that is guaranteed 100% natural-looking, we recommend that you use a stylist!
Why a stylist?
Highlighting your hair requires opening the cuticle layer of the hair in order to remove colour pigments. A stylist knows his/her products and has the expertise necessary to know what the end result will be. Your stylist can also help you choose the right colours for you and your hair so you end up with highlights that match your skin colour and style perfectly.
Highlighting is a chemical process that stresses your hair no matter how careful you are. Professional highlighting products come with added ingredients that reduce the strain on your hair. Your stylist knows what can and cannot be done with different hair types and hair colours. Dark hair colours tend to turn yellow when bleached and blonde hair can become overbleached.
If your hair is colour treated, it’s already been exposed to chemical pigments. The stylist knows how to avoid highlights turning yellow or orange. You’ve probably already seen examples of highlighting jobs that have gone terribly wrong. We all have.
Tips & tricks on how to create those beautiful highlights
- If you want to grow your hair long, you need to take very good care of your ends when adding highlights as they are already under a lot of strain. Take care of your ends by leaving the bleach on for as short as possible time and by having your split ends trimmed.
- Ask your stylist to use three different highlights, and remember to choose colours that are as close to your natural hair colour as possible.
- The colours should match the season: brighter colours in the summer and darker colours in the winter.
How to care for highlighted hair
Take good care of those highlights! There’s an abundant selection of products on the market which make sure that your hair doesn’t become frizzy, tangled and brittle in the highlighting process.
Make sure to use moisturising products when you wash and style your highlighted hair.
Use hair products that are made specifically for bleached hair. We recommend IdHAIR Niophlex, a three-step system designed to prevent damage. The series consists of three products, two for professional use. We’ll leave those to the stylist. However, the third one – the Maintainer – is for home use. The Maintainer softens and strengthens the hair while improving the hair’s flexibility and shine.
There are also products to counteract that annoying yellow sheen your hair may get when it’s highlighted. The Blonde products from our Elements Xclusive series contain extracts of Quartz and consist of a pigmented shampoo which nourishes and cleans the hair while effectively fighting those yellow tones. The Blonde Conditioner adds moisture and shine while neutralising the warm undertones in the highlights.
Apply Miracle Serum from Elements Xclusive to your lengths – especially to the ends – after drying and styling your hair. Care and shine in one.
Are you as excited as we are? Then it’s off to the stylist to get those perfect highlights!
Have a nice hair day!
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Highlights
