How to Highlight Your Hair at Home Without a Kit

without using box dye

In order to get highlights without using a kit, you can choose between two different techniques, cap highlights and scattered highlights, and you’ll need to buy the materials separately.
In order to do scattered highlights, you’ll need bleach powder, 10 and 30 volume developer, a comb, ash blonde dye and gloves.
To do the cap technique, you’ll need a silicon cap, a crochet hook, 10 and 30 volume developer, bleach powder, ash blonde dye, gloves and a hairbrush.

IMPORTANT: Everything that I’m about to tell you applies to virgin hair. By that I mean, hair that isn’t already dyed.

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Before going on to explain to you how to do each of these techniques for highlighting your hair, I want to explain that not using a color kit has a disadvantage but also several advantages. Let’s start with the disadvantage.

Buying the materials separately will be more expensive than buying them all together in a color kit.

But, you’ll be able to choose higher quality materials, which translates to materials that are better for your hair. Also, you’ll be able to personalize your highlights’ tone.

It’s most important to define what kind of highlights you want for your hair. You can go for highlights that make it look like your color lightens as you move down your hair, or you could decide to try for an effect that makes it seem like you have hundreds of highlights starting at your roots.

The kind of highlights you choose is what will determine which technique is better for you.

If you’re not a very patient person when it comes to these kinds of meticulous tasks or you don’t have a lot of experience with hair coloring, then I’d recommend you use the scattered highlights technique.
If you want your hair to be full of highlights and you’re both patient and careful when it comes time to work on your hair, then the cap technique is better for you.

Are you worried that you don’t know how to do either of these techniques?

Forget about your worries and stick with me, because I’ll tell you:

How to get scattered highlights without a color kit
How to do cap highlights without a color kit

You’re going to become an expert in highlighting your hair today, or, you’ll at least take the first few steps toward it.

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How to do scattered highlights without a color kit

Let’s be honest. Doing highlights at home is not something you can do in five minutes, but you can always get good results if you give it enough time and patience.

If you’re not very meticulous or skilled with hair coloring, then it’s best for you to do scattered highlights because they will create that fading effect as you move down your hair, since they don’t start at your roots. You’ll be able to get those locks you’re hoping for without making any big mistakes with this technique.

Materials:

Bleach powder
30 volume developer
Comb
Ash blonde dye
10 volume developer
Gloves
An old shirt

Step by step:

Detangle your hair and divide it into 6 sections. In order to do that, part your hair down the middle and trace a line with the comb from your crown to your ear, repeating on the other side. Then, divide the remaining back area of your hair into four sections.

Once you’ve sectioned your hair, braid each section, letting some thin areas of your hair out, then do the same in the next section. Do this in each section of your hair.

What you’ll end up with are uneven braids, full of bits of hair coming out of them, which is exactly what we need.

Put on gloves and mix one part bleach powder with two parts 30 volume developer. Once you’ve gotten a smooth mixture, start using it on those pieces of hair that you left out of the braids.

You should leave it in your hair about 30 minutes and check on the color often. Remember that you’re bleaching the areas of your hair where you’ll eventually do the highlights.

You should get to a light yellow color. Once your hair is that color, rinse, but don’t undo the braids.

In a plastic container, mix ¼ of the tube of ash blonde dye with the same amount of developer, but this time, use the 10 volume developer and a few drops of shampoo.

Use this mixture on each of the areas of hair you bleached quickly so the color turns out even.

Once the light yellow of your locks seems to have “toned down” to a blonde color, then it’s time to rinse out the dye, washing it out with your normal shampoo and then use a cream bath to help recover your hair’s moisture and make it easier to undo the braids.

Do you consider yourself a very careful, orderly person? If so, then the cap technique for highlights is better for you.

How to do highlights starting at your roots with a silicon cap

This technique is for those of us who are more obsessive or exact, that want their highlights to come all the way up to their roots perfectly.

Materials:

Silicon highlighting cap
2 millimeter crochet hook
Bleach powder
30 volume developer
Ash blonde dye
10 volume developer
An old shirt or towel
Hairbrush
Gloves

It’s very important that you have clean, dry and detangled hair before starting with your highlights.

Step by step:

Brush your hair back and put on the cap, starting at the front of your head and pulling it backward.

Start pulling small bits of hair through the holes in the cap, by hooking onto them with the crochet hook and pulling horizontally so you don’t hurt your scalp.

Try to pull out pieces of hair that are just below where the hole in the cap is. That will make sure that each piece of hair gets bleached right from the root.

Make sure you pull pieces of hair through every single hole in the cap.

Put on gloves and mix one part bleach with two parts 30 volume developer, until you have a smooth cream.

Use the mix on all of the hair that you’ve pulled through the cap. I recommend keeping a close eye on your hair and the moment you see that it’s reached that yellow color, rinse your hair immediately.

Now it’s time to tone those highlights with a light bath.

In order to do that, mix a tablespoon of ash blonde dye with a tablespoon of 10 volume developer and a few drops of shampoo.

Use that mix on all of the hair that you’ve bleached. When you see that those unwanted warm colors have disappeared, rinse and use conditioner on your hair, which will make it easier and less painful to remove the cap.

Conclusions

Doing highlights without a color kit is easier and better, since you can choose higher quality materials than what usually comes in a kit.

You can choose between two different techniques: scattered highlights, which are more focused on the middle and ends of your hair or the cap technique.

It will all depend on where you want to highlight your hair and your patience and skill with coloring it.

Which of the two techniques will you choose for highlighting your hair?

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