Lowlights vs Highlights

After a bit of extra light in your hair?

Whether you want to restore radiance to dull hair or just fancy a change of color, lowlights and highlights are the easiest way to transform your shade to something much more interesting. But which one is right for you and what do you need to know before you commit to your new color?

If you dream of having multiple honied shades running through your hair like Jennifer Lopez or five shades of chocolate a la Kristen Stewart then highlights or lowlights are what you need to ask your stylist for.

Technique of lowlights and highlights

Lowlights and highlights are essentially partial colouring techniques, adding a different shade to certain strands of hair so your barnet ends up having depth, texture and various complementary hues. The technique used differs from block colour hair dyeing and involves sectioning off the hair to target the parts you want transformed. This way you can have a multi-hued more natural looking finish.

Celebs like Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lawrence are great ambassadors for highlights and lowlights as their hair is always full of light and dark accents which adds body, movement and interest to their lush locks.

To achieve highlights your hairdresser will use a paste usually containing a bleaching agent and peroxide. They then apply it to the hair using a special brush and either foils (strips of foil or plastic used to separate strands of hair from the rest) or a cap (where hair is pulled through little holes – although this technique is more rare).

Unlike a full hair color (usually called permenant or semi-permenant dyeing) you can choose to have a full-head or half-head of highlights. This means you can simply have the top of your hair dyed leaving the underneath natural – although if you wear your hair up a lot, then this doesn’t look great.

You can also have a T-section or infills done to maintain the look as your roots begin to show. This means only a small section of the roots on the top of your head are re-dyed. This makes maintaining your look a little cheaper.

Why Have Highlights Or Lowlights ?

Highlights or lowlights are perfect if you want to give your barnet a bit of a color boost, they’re also a great way to start off dyeing your hair for the first time as you retain some of your natural shade too.

They allow you to have a sun-kissed effect with lighter strands running through your hair in a just-back-from-holiday hue.