You’re not satisfied with the monotone color of your bleached hair? A good alternative is to dye a few small areas in a darker color, a technique that hair colorists call lowlights.
- In order to do lowlights, all you need to do is choose a dye two colors darker than your base color and always within the same range of tones. Don’t worry, in a few minutes I’ll give you a detailed guide of possible base color and lowlight combinations.
- Also, it’s always a good idea not to wash your hair at least 48 hours after getting them to protect your hair’s health.
- You can get lowlights with a cap. The hair colorist will strategically choose certain areas of your hair to darken, breaking your color’s monotony.
If you want to get this kind of dark lowlights on your bleached hair, it’s best to go to a professional salon.
Because your hair recently went through an aggressive chemical process that always leaves hair weakened. That’s why a professional hair colorist should look at what state your hair fiber is in and if it can resist the dye’s chemicals.
Lowlights are one of the most used techniques in the salon to break monotonous color, especially for hair that has ended up a dull blonde, lacking shine and depth after bleach.
After all, those small darker-colored locks will help to make your lighter colors stand out even more. And you usually apply these colors to light hair to make blonde shine.
If you want to break up with a uniform color after dyeing your hair, keep reading, because I’ll tell you:
- How to choose the right color for your lowlights
- How to get lowlights on bleached hair
After reading all of this information, you won’t be unsure about any part of the process anymore.
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Guide to choosing the best color for your lowlights
Lowlights are small areas of hair that have been dyed with a darker color. What do I mean by a darker color?
When I talk about darker colors, most people immediately think of black or dark brown. But, to a hair colorist, a darker color is always darker in relation to the client’s base tone, not necessarily a color that you might think of as universally dark.
After all, not everyone’s hair is suited for lowlights using those two colors!
As a general rule, when a client wants to get lowlights, I use a color 2-3 shades darker than their base tone.
And most of the time when a client asks for this technique, it’s because their highlights have gotten too light and they want to tone down their blonde a little bit.
If you’ve bleached your hair, take a look in the mirror. What do you see? Let me guess.
- At first glance, your hair is all one color. That color is exactly the same from root to end.
- Also, since the color is so uniform, it doesn’t give the illusion of either depth or volume. It’s a rigid and flat color, lacking life and shine.
That’s what bleach does to your hair: it leaves it exactly the same from root to end. And, if you want to give it more light, depth and even shine and movement, lowlights are the perfect option.
But, in order to avoid disaster, you must choose the right color for your lowlights, since there are combos that really don’t turn out good.
Can you imagine platinum blonde with dark brown lowlights?
That would be great if you were trying to start a protest for endangered zebras, but aesthetically, it would be horrendous.
In order to avoid that kind of unfortunate error, you’ll need to keep in mind your base color and the color you’ll use for your lowlights. That’s why the ideal combination is always within in the same kind of color.Never ever get lowlights more than 2-3 shades darker than your base color.
I promised a complete guide to possible colors for lowlights that will tell you which colors will go best with your bleached hair. And that’s what I’m about to give you.
- If you bleached your hair to a light brown 6, your lowlights can be brown 4 or dark brown 3.
- If you got to a dark blonde 7, then you can get lowlights in medium brown 5 or brown 4.
- If you bleached your hair to blonde 8, your lowlights can be light brown 6 or medium brown 5.
- If you bleached your hair to lighter blonde 9, your lowlights can be dark blonde 7 or light brown 6.
- If you bleached your hair lightest blonde 10, your lowlights can be blonde 8 or dark blonde 7.
You won’t have any trouble choosing your lowlights with this guide.
But, remember that the hair colorist always has the last word because that is who will be seeing your hair in real life right there. Also, they’ll show you the menu of colors, which is an important tool for choosing the right color.
You can put the color samples up to your hair so you can see exactly how the color will look compared to your hair.
That way, your bleached hair won’t all be the same color and the lowlights will make your base color stand out.
How to use lowlights to break away from the uniformity of bleached hair
- If you’ve ever been to a beauty salon, then you’ve probably seen many women with a cap on to get highlights.
Lowlights use the same tool. Your hair colorist will put a cap on your head with small holes that they will pull small areas of hair through to apply to them a darker dye.
Any salon that has experience with highlights can also do lowlights.
- I recommend that you don’t do lowlights at home for the sake of your hair’s health, since it’s a technique that requires prior knowledge about hair coloring.
The hair colorist’s experience can make the difference between well-done lowlights and a full-on color disaster.
It’s important that you look for reviews or comments online about a salon or even to ask your friends and acquaintances if they know a salon that they trust for highlights.
Talk to the professional that will be working on your hair and ask them any questions you have about the process, the materials they’re going to use and the end result.
- Once you have the right salon, you’ll get an appointment, and you should show up without having washed your hair for 48 hours before the appointment. That will help to protect your scalp from irritation from the process because of your hair’s natural oils.
- How long will the process take? Approximately 2-2.5 hours.
Does that seem like a lot? In hair coloring, that’s like a blink of an eye. Because, don’t forget that there are preparation steps, like preparing your hair for the lowlights, putting the cap on and meticulously separating your hair through the holes in the cap.
- And that needs to be done lock-by-lock very carefully.
Once the locks are separated, the hair colorist will use your chosen tone to apply the lowlights. Up to that point, it’s probably been 40 minutes or more, depending on the hair colorist’s experience and your hair’s length.
Then you’ll have to wait another 40 or so minutes for the dye to take effect, then after that, they’ll rinse your hair, dry it and brush it.
- By that then, you’ll probably have been in the salon almost 3 hours, but the end result will be fantastic.
Because you won’t have that uniform color from bleaching your hair anymore.
Once you leave the salon, all you have to do is follow the instructions from your hair stylist. You’ll need to take good care of your lowlights to make sure they always look radiant.
Try to get rid of shampoos that contain sulfates and nurture your hair weekly with some kind of hydrating mask.
It’s time to get rid of that uniform, boring color from bleach: What color lowlights will you get to do it?
