Blonde hair with highlights and lowlights is an excellent way to add depth, dimension and vibrancy with the combination of lighter and darker tones creating a multi-dimensional effect that makes the hair appear fuller, more dynamic, and visually interesting. Blonde hair with highlights and lowlights offers versatility because it allows for a range of looks, from subtle sun-kissed styles to bolder, contrasting effects.
To fully appreciate the impact of balayage lowlights on blonde hair, it's essential to understand the basics of highlights and lowlights.
Highlights add lighter shades to hair strands, creating contrast and brightness, while lowlights add darker shades to create depth and dimension. Highlights work well for anyone aiming for a sun-kissed, natural look with added texture because they mimic the way that the sun naturally lightens the hair, creating depth and dimension. Lowlights are an excellent way to add depth, dimension, and a more natural look to blonde hair, preventing it from appearing flat and one-dimensional. By strategically placing darker strands of hair throughout the blonde, lowlights create contrast and richness, mimicking the natural variations found in hair with sun-kissed dimension.
I’m sure you’ve heard the term lowlights used before, but what are they and what is their function? To get lowlights, your stylist will add in a color that is several shades darker than your base color using a foil highlight technique or even a balayage. Blending lowlights and highlights creates contrast and dimension resulting in some gorgeous color transformation. There are different reasons you would want to get hair lowlights. Sometimes, you are just looking to add dimension to your highlighted hair. In this case, adding a darker color will make the lighter highlights show up more. Look at this example of blonde hair without lowlights. Now, watch how it comes to life with lowlights. Another case when a colorist would advise getting hair lowlights is to fix hair color after summer when your hair is really light or brassy from the sun. Also, women who are frequent blonding clients and have had consecutive highlights put in might need to get back to the dimension they had when they first started. When styling lowlights, you want to add waves or curls to your hair - this will make them show up better.
Balayage, a French word meaning "sweeping," is a freehand technique of applying highlights, and does not usually use foil to separate the hair. Balayage creates soft and natural gradation of lightness along the hair strand-usually slightly deeper closer to the scalp and lighter towards the ends. Typically, balayage starts away from the roots and is focused towards the mid-shafts and ends of hair.Balayage is a subtle freehand colouring technique. Colour is painted directly onto designated sections of the hair without using foil. Balayage is a softer, more natural looking result than traditional foil highlights.
Read also: Balayage Technique
Balayage is meant to be natural-looking, as if your hair lightens in the sun during summertime, so adding lowlights will help give it dimension. Brunettes should leave dimension for a more natural grow-out, so lowlights help keep it natural. This technique is called foilayage, and it’s used to mimic a balayage using traditional lightener with teasing to accomplish this lighter blonde.
There are several reasons why you might opt for balayage lowlights:
Adding lowlights to blonde hair is a fantastic way to introduce depth and dimension. All-over blonde colour can look artificial, but one way of softening that is by weaving in lowlights of different blonde shades. By introducing pockets of light and shade you reveal a more natural looking, multi-tonal blonde your client will love. Lowlights are also great for adding more dimension to a balayage result that may be a bit too blonde. Lowlights create depth, texture and volume and are great for enhancing the client’s facial features, working with their skin tone.Leaving depth underneath your blonde hair is important to make blonde highlights on top stand out. For natural blondes that want to go lighter, the word “lowlight” might sound scary. Still, adding this depth in will actually make your blonde hair look lighter!
Another case when a colorist would advise getting hair lowlights is to fix hair color after summer when your hair is really light or brassy from the sun. Also, women who are frequent blonding clients and have had consecutive highlights put in might need to get back to the dimension they had when they first started.
Enhancing a natural redhead with highlights and lowlights will really make their hair stand out. This client has a beautiful natural auburn hair color, but sometimes it can lack dimension.
Read also: Clip-In Balayage Styles
Another way to use lowlights is for gray blending. A way to camouflage gray is adding cool toned highlights and a lowlight that is close to your natural color. This look requires frequent toning sessions.
Several techniques and styles incorporate balayage lowlights to enhance blonde hair. Here are a few examples:
This technique is a mix of highlights and lowlights. Blondes should add lowlights to make blonde strands pop more! This technique is also called a foilayage. This client is a natural brunette, so it may take several sessions to go this light.
I’m sure you heard the term money piece by now, that is a heavy highlight that you see in everyone’s hairline. As a stylist, one of the most important areas that I place a lowlight is right behind the face frame. Bright blonde money pieces frame the face with bold blonde highlights, while dark lowlights throughout add contrast and depth to the rest of the hair. This style creates a striking and modern look.
When we’re talking about dimension, there’s no better example than this look that we absolutely adore. Lowlights: 30g 4/71 + 60g 1.9%
Read also: Money Piece Highlights with Balayage
Reverse balayage is when your stylist uses dark colours to add lowlights near your roots and throughout your strands to add depth and texture to your colour.
For all the ice queens out there, try this extremely cool look created by Cheryl Doig. She used an overall ash blonde colour and enhanced by scattering ice blonde lowlights towards the ends. She also added extra shine by glossing the hair. Gloss ends: 20g 9/96 + 20g 9/01 + 20g 10/0 + 120g 1.9%
The tone of blonde highlights and lowlights can be adjusted to suit different base shades of blonde. Cooler blondes often work well with ashy highlights or even platinum lowlights to add contrast and brightness. For warmer blondes, golden or honey tones can create a softer, more natural look.
Adding a darker ash tone next to an icy blonde will keep a brunette looking cooler. It’s important when you ask your colorist to add dimension and maintain a cooler all-over look, eliminating as much warmth as possible.
Burgundy and copper tones are great for fall! Adding two hair colors will really bring brown hair to life. Caramel lowlights are a great option for the fall hair color.
Here are some specific combinations of blonde and brown that can be achieved with highlights and lowlights:
Choosing a highlighting or lowlighting technique that complements your hair texture is recommended to achieve a look that is natural and flattering. For example, straight hair often shows off highlights and lowlights in a more defined way, giving it a smooth, polished look. The contrast can make the hair look sleek and shiny. Curly hair, on the other hand, tends to suit softer, more blended tones. This helps the colour flow naturally with the curls and adds depth without looking too bold.
Blonde hair with highlights and lowlights does require regular maintenance to keep the tones looking fresh and balanced. Over time, colour can fade or shift, especially with sun exposure or frequent washing. For those looking to reduce upkeep, low-maintenance techniques like balayage or babylights are great options; they blend softly into the hair and grow out more naturally.
To keep blonde highlights looking vibrant and healthy, it’s important to use colour-safe products.
For cooler blonde tones, incorporating a purple or toning shampoo into your routine can help combat brassiness and maintain a fresh, clean finish. Avoid brassiness by washing with a purple shampoo like our Violet Crush Intensive Purple Shampoo, which you can use weekly to maintain your salon-fresh colour.
Blonde hair with highlights and lowlights can become dry and porous over time, especially after lightening treatments. Regular deep conditioning is essential to help restore moisture, improve elasticity, and bring back shine.
Lightened hair is more vulnerable to heat damage, so protecting it before styling is important. This adds a protective barrier that helps reduce breakage and dryness. For blonde hair with highlights and lowlights, this extra step can make a big difference in keeping your strands healthy, smooth, and shiny.
Regular salon visits are important for keeping blonde highlights and lowlights looking their best. Root touch-ups every 6-8 weeks help maintain a seamless blend, while trims keep your hair in shape and prevent split ends.
When it comes to hair color highlighting and balayage techniques and trends, sometimes the differences between them are so nuanced that it’s hard to keep them straight.
Highlights are traditionally applied using a method called “foiling,” in which sheets of foil are used to separate strands of hair that have been covered with a color or lightener before wrapping them in the foil to process. The foil keeps the lightener from getting on the surrounding hair, and also traps heat, allowing the lightener to lift more effectively. Foil highlights are generally placed close to the scalp, lightening the hair from the roots to the ends for an all-over highlighted look.
A huge benefit of balayage is a naturally blended look, which leads to a less noticeable regrowth. This means you can get away with more time between highlighting services, so this technique is great for someone who is looking for lower-maintenance color. This technique may also be more gentle on the hair since you are not drastically lightening your hair all over.
Since balayage is not designed to create highlights right to the root (like a foil highlight), you may not see as much lightness at the root area. Therefore, if your ends are already light and/or you want to add more lightness to the top of your hair, then balayage might not be the right highlighting technique for you.
If you’re wondering how to maintain that soft dimension, well, you came to the right place. Luckily, balayage is easier to maintain than it is to spell, and our VP of Technical Design & Education, David Stanko, created a video to teach you how to keep your balayage from going brassy, and how to touch up your roots without busting up your beautiful balayage.
Creating different tones within the same overall color. You have: Red or brunette all-over color You want: Different tones within that base of color You need: Bowl and brush, two permanent colors
Brunette doesn’t have to be just brunette, and red simply red. Adding golden, copper, mahogany, and violet tones can create richer shades of hair color. For a multi-tonal palette, select one tone to be your base or root color, and an alternate tone to add variation. Here is an example of how this would work:As a brunette, if your base color is a medium brown with hints of gold, you can add mahogany or auburn tones for variation.Simply apply your base hair color and touch up roots as you normally would. Then, take small panels of hair and paint the variation of color onto those select small sections, painting right up to the area where the root color ends.After you are done painting on the lowlights, close up your foils so the color doesn’t get on the rest of your hair.Use the color tint brush to alternate painting the two colors on various sections of hair.
Creating lowlights (darker pieces) in uniformly color treated hair. You have: Dark blonde to medium brown color-treated hair You want: To make pieces pop by adding slightly darker tones You need: Your pre-selected darker shade, foil or plastic wrap, bowl and brush
Sure everyone knows about highlights, but what about lowlights? Lowlights can add gorgeous depth and dimension. To add complexity to your color, simply choose a lowlight color 1-2 levels darker and typically of a slightly different tone than your base color. Here is an example of how this would work:If you have all-over red hair, you can make the red color pop by choosing another color one shade darker.Choose small pieces of hair where you want to add dimension, and place foil or plastic wrap under these small sections of hair. This creates a canvas for you to apply color, using your gloved fingers, the applicator bottle, or a brush. Pro tip-when adding lowlights, start a couple of inches back from the face. This lets the lighter colors stay nearest to your skin for a more a natural-looking effect.After you are done painting on the lowlights, close up your foils so the color doesn’t get on the rest of your hair.Allow to process fully for 35 minutes before shampooing out as normal. Here’s another pro tip-only remove the foils when you’re ready to shampoo right away, as you don’t want to pull them out early and have the color laying against the non color treated hair too long.
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