Foil Highlights

One hairstyle that has become somewhat popular recently is hair highlights. Hair highlighting is when hair dye is used to color unique strands of hair of different sizes and in various locations throughout the head. There is a variety of choices in different types of highlights. The basic types are foil highlights, hair painting, low-lighting and chunking.

Foil highlighting is the most common, and it is where foil is used to separate and wrap strands of hair so the color is not mixed with other strands. A brush is used to paint the color on the various strands.

Hair painting is when a simple brush or comb is used to paint on color; this type is often available in retail stores and not recommended for serious highlighting.

Chunking is exactly what the name implies; it is when different size chunks of hair are colored.

Finally, low-lighting is the opposite of highlighting. It is when people who have lighter hair color different strands a darker shade instead of lighter.

Advantages Over Full Coloring

One of the reasons that hair highlights has become so popular is because it has many advantages over full blown hair coloring. A big setback of full hair coloring is that everyone can tell as soon as the natural hair color starts to grow back out because it is all one color and stands out very noticeably.

This is not the case with highlights. Since highlights only color certain areas of the hair, it is hard to tell when the natural hair color starts to grow back out because it never completely was removed.

You can stop coloring whenever you like, which is not always the case with full coloring, because it can look so bad when the natural color clashes with the dye color.

How to Choose a Hair Highlight

When choosing a highlight color, the most important factor to consider is your current hair color. You want to choose a highlight that will naturally accent and contrast your hair. Also, you want to make sure that you are complementing skin tones. Blondes and brunettes usually will want to use ashy or beige shades for cool skin tones and caramel shades for warm skin tones as an example.

Decide which type of highlighting you want. This will depend on what look you are trying to achieve. Please consult with our professional hair colorist or stylist Angela.