Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional treatment. Always perform a patch test and strand test before applying bleach or hair dye.
If you’ve ever looked at hair highlights, you’ve most likely gone down the rabbit hole researching the various options. Unfortunately, deciding which highlighting is perfect for your hair can be challenging.
Fortunately, we’ve got 18 gorgeous types of hair highlights for you. So whether you want subtle, drastic, or natural color transformations, we’ve got them for you.
What Are Hair Highlights?
Hair highlights refer to adding high-lift colors or bleach to hair strands.
Typically, there are multiple shades complement your hair. It is achieved by applying lightener or high-lift color directly to your hair to create contrast with your base color or to weave multiple levels of lightness together.
There are several types of hair highlights, and there is a wide range of colors to choose from.
Why Use Hair Highlights?
- Create a contrast between your natural hair color and highlights, adding dimension and depth to the hair.
- Brighten up your hair color or make your hair look fuller.
- Freshen up your hairstyle without committing to a full color change.
- Experiment with trendy shades and colors.
- Add some glamor to your boring short haircut.
Full Highlights vs. Partial Highlights: What’s the Difference?
Full highlights cover sections of your entire head with highlighted pieces. With full highlights, you can expect consistency, especially if you’re someone who wears their hair in a ponytail.
Partial highlights differ from full highlights in that they only include the front and top back of your head. As a result, the underneath of your hair remains natural, providing depth for people with finer hair.
You can read the differences between partial and full highlights here.
Classic Types of Hair Highlights
You keep your natural hair color for classic highlights and add blonde streaks to it. They are the most common hair highlighting options used by hair stylists daily.
The following are the classic hair highlights that never go out of style.
Traditional Highlights
Traditional highlights are the most popular highlights to add to your hair. Stylists carefully lighten strands from just off the root down to the ends to achieve these hair highlights.
Your natural hair color creates depth and dimension as the base of your hair remains the same.
Foil Highlights
Foil highlights are different from traditional highlights and balayage. This technique takes using aluminum foil to a whole new level.
Foil highlights stack the aluminum foil to separate the strands into highlighted sections. This technique creates a distinct, patterned contrast between your darker base and the lighter highlighted sections.
Dimensional Highlights
Dimensional highlights offer a contrast for people with dark brown hair and light highlights. You’re adding dimension with a hair coloring technique that creates the illusion of thicker hair. Natural waves or using an iron, this look is great with curls.
You can get dimensional highlights with partial highlights, full highlights, babylights, and peekaboo highlights.
Face-Framing Highlights
As you can tell from the name, face-framing highlights focus on lightening the hair that frames your face. It creates a sun-kissed look because it lightens the same parts of your hair that the sun naturally lightens.
It’s a low-maintenance type of hair highlighting that looks natural after growing out, so you’ll need fewer salon visits over time.
Babylights
If you want a sun-kissed hairstyle with blonde highlights, then babylights are the perfect type of hair highlights for you.
The highlighting technique is the same as traditional highlights. However, it’s more subtle and is a low-maintenance look.
Balayage
Balayage is a free hand highlighting technique where lightener is painted on to create a soft, gradual transition. The highlights blend into your natural color and look sun kissed, instead of forming a sharp line.
It is highly customizable. You can keep it subtle and natural, or go brighter and more high contrast, depending on the look you want.
High-Contrast Hair Highlights
Some of the most beautiful hair highlights are bold. The following high-contrasting highlights are perfect for those who loves stand out in the crowd.
Ombré Highlights
A classic ombré keeps hair darker at the top and slowly fades into a much lighter color at the ends. To get this look, the hair is split into horizontal sections, and lightener is added to the lower part.
People often confuse ombré and balayage, but the main difference is that ombré is a finished look (the dark-to-light fade), while balayage is the actual technique (freehand painting the lightener). In fact, stylists frequently use the vertical balayage technique to achieve a seamless ombré style.
Sombré
If you’re looking for a subtle type of hair highlight, then look no further. The word sombré comes from subtle and ombré.
Sombré is a softer style that results in a more delicate look. The ends and the roots are almost the same color while adding hints of color without diverting too far from your natural hair color.
Smoked-Out Roots
Smoked-out roots are a subtle type of hair highlight because your roots remain darker than the rest of your hair.
This choice is an excellent option for curly hair highlights. These partial brown hair highlights add dimension and allow your hair to grow out easily.
Lightening hair directly at the root requires frequent touch-ups and carries a risk of overlapping bleach, which can cause breakage. However, the smoked-out roots technique avoids this by keeping the root dark, allowing your hair to grow out easily.
Ribbon Highlights
You begin with your natural color, then weave vibrant colors or natural blonde highlights throughout your whole head. Ribbon highlights come from lightening the strands like ribbons.
It’s the perfect hairstyle for natural waves because ribbon highlights contrast the light and dark pieces.
Peekaboo Highlights
Peekaboo highlights get their name from the popular childhood game because the color is hidden on the inside layers of your hair. No matter the color or shade, these highlights are applied underneath rather than on top, near your roots.
Whether you have dark or light hair, you can add a bright, fun color to your peekaboos. Just keep in mind that if you have dark hair and want a vibrant shade like pink or blue, your stylist will still need to bleach those hidden sections first, so expect a two-step process that will factor into your salon cost.
From subtle dimension to bold pops of color, this style is fully customizable and lets you experiment with shades that blend seamlessly into your hair.
Trendy Types of Hair Highlights
These trendy hair highlights take your hair color journey to the next level. Whether you have gray hair or fine hair, you can achieve the best highlighted hairstyles with a stylish hair highlighting technique and hair dyes.
Here are the best fashionable hair highlights that will keep you stylish for years.
Foilayage
Foilayage takes place by painting the hair with a balayage technique, but then wrapping those sections into aluminum foil for maximum lift. For people with darker shades who want vibrant blonde highlights, it’s a better option than the subtlety of a balayage.
This hair highlighting technique combines foiled highlights with balayage.
For those who want to achieve the balayage look, it needs to be followed by color melting. First, the darkest tone remains at the root. Then, the further down your hair you go, light toners blend into your hair’s middle section.
The lightest tone gets applied to the ends of your hair.
Teasylights
Teasylights differ from other hair highlighting types because the stylist teases (backcombs) your hair in small sections.
Backcombing diffuses the color line for a seamless blend. While it does temporarily tangle the hair, a professional will gently detangle it at the shampoo bowl with conditioner to prevent breakage.
Teasing just the right amount gives you softer and more vibrant foil highlights. Also, it’s best if an experienced stylist does teasylights to your hair.
Money Piece Highlights
Money piece highlights are types of hair highlights that frame your face, making them ideal brown hair highlights. In addition, the pieces in the front that accentuate your facial features get brightened.
Whether you have natural blonde highlights or want blonde highlights, the shade at the front of your face is lighter than the rest.
Strandlighting
Strandlighting is similar to traditional highlights. However, the technique differs because you place the foils on small hair pieces.
These natural blonde highlights can be the subtle yet trendy change you’ve been looking for.
Strobing
Strobing is a trendy type of hair highlighting tailored to each client. With most traditional highlighting, customers want uniform highlights placed throughout their hair.
For those who want artistic freedom with their hair, use the balayage method or foil highlights to apply the color. Deciding between these two techniques allows you to choose a brighter or softer effect.
Flamboyage Highlights
Flamboyage is a specialized technique created by hair artist Angelo Seminara for Davines. It combines the soft gradient of an ombré with the seamless blending of a balayage.
Instead of freehand painting, this technique use proprietary clear, self-stick adhesive strips (Flamboyage Meche) to randomly lift micro-fine layers of hair for lightening. As the strips are completely transparent, your stylist can watch the color develop in real-time to ensure the perfect shade.
This unique method creates incredibly soft, sun-kissed highlights with zero harsh lines.
Frosted and Chunky Highlights
Frosted tips will throw you straight back into the 90s. It’s a type of hair highlighting that adds dimension to your hair.
To get frosted tips on short hair, a highlighting cap is often used to pull small pieces through for lightening. For long hair, stylists hand-paint or use foils to isolate the ends. As a result, frosted highlights appear scattered throughout the hair.
Chunky highlights can be a seamless blend of any hair color you choose. But compared to your natural hair color, your chunky highlights tend to be big and bold.
Anyone with black hair could add a bold primary or secondary color to start their hair color journey.
Tips & Tricks for Achieving the Best Highlighting Results
The highlighting process can be tedious and overwhelming. Here are a few tangible tips and tricks to get the best results.
- Match highlights to your skin tone: For the most natural, flattering look, match your undertones. Warm skin tones look best with warm highlights (like caramel or golden blonde), and cool skin tones pair best with cool highlights (like ash or platinum).
- Wash your hair a day before: Foils don’t touch your scalp, so you don’t need a heavy oil barrier. Just make sure your hair is not damp and is completely free from product buildup, like dry shampoo or heavy stylers, so the lightener can lift evenly.
- Wait for your first wash at home: Your stylist will wash your hair at the salon after applying toning and conditioning, but you should wait 2-3 days before washing it yourself at home. This helps preserve the toner or gloss they applied over your new highlights so it doesn’t fade too quickly.
- Wash your hair in cold water: Cold water can help prevent your new hair color or toner from fading too quickly. Hot water swells the hair shaft and provides heat that speeds up color loss, causing semi-permanent toners, glosses, and moisture to wash out and fade much more quickly.
- Limit the heat to your hair: Limiting the amount of heat you expose your hair to will prevent the color from getting stripped. If possible, allow your hair to dry naturally. Doing this will enable you to maintain your new color and avoid causing split ends.
Final Thoughts
Your highlights can make you look cute, chic, sassy, or sophisticated. If you want subtle or natural dimensions on your hair, try getting hair highlights.
Try out any of these gorgeous types of hair highlighting techniques to give yourself a look that’s sure to make you feel confident and beautiful.