The Ultimate Guide To Highlights: Enhance Your Natural Hair Color
Stylists added foils to the mix in the 80s and hair highlights have been the rage ever since. The toasted brown streaks may have turned to icy blondes, but there’s no looking back when it comes to this hair trend. Hair highlights are the perfect way to narrow down on the look you wish to achieve. Be it a subtle, sun-kissed aura or a bold, dramatic presence, hair highlights can add that oomph to your hair instantly.
What Are Hair Highlights?
Simply put, hair highlights are sections of your hair that are colored to appear lighter than your base color. If your hair is brown, you might add lighter brown or blonde highlights. These tend to add dimension to your hair and can really bring out your hair texture. This means your waves, curls, or even straight sheen will look more defined. Hair highlights can also make your base color appear richer and undoubtedly add style to your overall look.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF HAIR HIGHLIGHTS
While ‘lighter streaks’ was the genesis of hair highlights, the years of creativity has put a new spin to this style. New names such as balayage, babylights, and ombré have cropped up, begging us to revisit the question, what are hair highlights and what are the various types of hair highlights. Since they largely differ in their visual appeal, consider this your playbook of answers:
- TRADITIONAL HAIR HIGHLIGHTS
- BALAYAGE
- OMBRÉ
- LOWLIGHTS
- UNDERLIGHTS
- BABYLIGHTS
- FACE FRAMING HAIR HIGHLIGHTS
The foil hair highlights are often about taking narrow pieces of hair lengths, wrapping them in foils, and lightening them to create a contrast. These hair highlights are interspersed throughout your head and the lightened section is woven into your natural hair. This type of hair highlights create a contrast that is quite out there.
It's impossible for this hair highlight trend to have escaped your ears. They’re more blended into your hair to blur the lines between your hair highlight and base shade. Here, the colorists simply paint on with a brush and ditch the foil to create a natural, sun-kissed look.
These hair highlights give you a two-toned gradient look, starting off dark at the roots and going lighter towards the ends. If you want the hair highlights to give a softer contrast, look into sombré or soft-ombré.
As the name suggests, these are the opposite of hair highlights and darken the portions of your hair instead of lightening them. Your blonde-browns are one of the most popular looks among these types of highlights.
The underlights mean coloring the lower layer of your hair while your top hair shade stays intact. These are only visible when your hair moves a certain way, earning the title of often referred to as ‘peekaboo’ hair highlights.
Another rising trend, babylights are super fine hair highlights that mimic the glow and colors of a young child’s hair. This type of hair highlights lighten very thin sections of your hair, as fine as a comb’s grab.
An internet favorite, face-framing hair highlights strategically cover portions of the hair closer to your face, making it appear more sculpted and structured.
HOW TO DO HAIR HIGHLIGHTS
See A Professional
You may be ready to take the risk after seeing the array of at-home highlighting kits and YouTube tutorials. However, hair highlights aren’t the choice for experiments. Different types of hair highlights work for different hair cuts and textures, needing the eye of a professional. Professional colorists can customize and tweak the color application to best enhance your personal hairstyle. Not to mention that they are trained to take into account things like skin tone and eye color when coming up with the best color palette for you.
There’s also the matter of hair health. Because any type of hair highlights involve lightening the hair, there is a potential for some damage. The pros are not only trained on how to use the color properly in order to minimize this damage, but can also incorporate strengthening treatments to help maintain the health and integrity of the hair. A favorite among colorists? The Redken Flash Lift Bonder, an in-salon treatment that protects the bonds in the hair and provides up to 8 levels of lift.
Communicating with Your Colorist
Lastly, being open with your hair artist is another important aspect while wondering how to get hair highlights. Clear communication with your colorist is crucial. Schedule a consultation and bring photos of colors you like and dislike. Discuss how often you're willing to visit the salon for maintaining your hair highlights. Remember, you have to wear your hair everyday. So, convey whether you want a subtle or bold statement, communication with your hairstylist is vital to getting your desired results.
HOW TO MAINTAIN HAIR HIGHLIGHTS
Once you’ve zeroed down on how to do hair highlights, we move on to learning how to maintain these hair highlights. Lightening the hair can lead to dryness and brittleness, so using the right products at home is essential. Healthy hair can hold the color better, this is why we suggest using professional products like Color Extend Magnetics Shampoo and a moisturizing mask like Redken's Color Extend Mask to get stronger, smoother hair with intense moisture replenishment.