The Best Hair Coloring Techniques
Whether you want to refresh your color, add dimension or cover grays, there are a variety of hair coloring techniques that deliver amazing results. These include balayage, highlights, ombre and frosted tips.
It’s important to pick the right shade for your skin tone, so you don’t end up with a brassy or orange-brown hue. Try long-lasting hair dyes that stylists love and do a patch test before coloring your hair.
Dip-Dye
Unlike bleaching your hair, you can achieve a pristine dip dye look without damaging your natural locks. Just choose a color that is a few shades darker than your natural color and apply to the ends.
Blondes can really have fun with this technique, as even bright blue or icy green looks great when topped off by platinum blonde hair. Purple is another gorgeous option for brunettes, or dark blondes looking to add a vibrant tint to their hair color.
For a safe at-home dip dye color experience, make sure you have a strand test, gloves, an old towel, and foil handy, as well as the semi-permanent hair coloring product of your choice.
Lowlights
Lowlights are darker sections of hair dyed into the color, and they create a shadowy effect. They’re especially flattering on lighter hues because they add dimension that makes the shade look more natural.
Blondes, meanwhile, love them because they can tone down too-light blondes and avoid the high maintenance of bleaching their whole mane. Plus, they can also help them flirt with red hair without going full-out (and then having to touch up it all the time).
To ensure your highlights don’t look like a zebra, papanikolas recommends staying within two shades of your base color. And he warns against pulling lowlights all the way to the ends, which can create a “matte, dark and chunky” effect.
Color Melt
Color melt is a newer technique that blends highlight and balayage with your base color for a soft transition. This softer version of ombre or dip dye is a trendy fashion shade and works well on any hair palette.
It can be done with natural colors or even with vibrant rainbow tones, it’s up to you! Typically, a stylist will use two to three shades of hair dye, and overlap them so there are no lines of demarcation.
This technique looks great on any hair texture but is especially good for curls, as it can help create a more naturally blended highlighting effect. Plus, it’s low-maintenance and doesn’t require regular root touch ups.
Tortoiseshell
Tortoiseshell is a color technique that’s perfect for brunettes who want to add more dimension without the stark contrast of ombre. “A lot of people are shying away from ombre because they don’t like the demarcation lines, but tortoiseshell can be just as subtle and natural,” Glamour UK reports.
To create the look, start with a dark chocolate base color and then gradually add baby balayage highlights in warm blonde tones such as caramel and chestnut. Use a light hand when applying the highlights to avoid looking overdone. Then, finish off with toffee or honey tones for a finished look. You can also ask your stylist to apply ribbons of color throughout the hair for a more natural-looking effect.
Frosting
Frosting is a hair coloring technique that lightens the tips of your strands. The result is a soft and subtle multidimensional look that looks very similar to a sunkissed or sun-bleached hair color.
This is a great option for someone who wants to cover gray hair because it’s more subtle than other highlighting techniques such as balayage or wet-lights. It also grows out super naturally, making it low maintenance and easy to maintain.
Stylists use traditional or clay lighteners to achieve this look. They’ll start by lifting strands one shade lighter than their natural hair color and then blend in a cool blond shade to add contrast and dimension.
