Why Get Professional Foil Hair Highlights?

The only way you can assure that you will get professional-looking foil hair highlights is to get them done by a professional! The stylists at Salon Frank Paul in Colorado Springs have years–decades, really–of experience with color.

Can you duplicate that at home in your bathroom mirror?

Knowing what color will fit your specific hair is a skill learned over years of practice. It’s not only the brand of color that matters, it’s the color itself: how it will act on your hair, and will match your overall coloring.

The application itself is an art as well as a skill. Knowing exactly how much hair to weave into the foil is very specific to how much highlight you end up with in the end.

So when you think about doing your foil hair highlights at home and you get that sick feeling in your gut, pay attention! Come to Salon Frank Paul and relax in urban luxury while a pro does your foil hair highlight. You won’t regret it!

Want to know more about foil hair highlights? The following info is from Professional Hair Color: What it all Means on the Peter Lamas Beauty site.

Highlights and Lowlights

Highlights do exactly what their name implies – they mimic those beautiful, light strands of hair that some people were born with and others enjoy after a few hours – or days – in the sun.

They can be added to any natural or artificial base color, but are especially popular when paired with dirty blonde or mousy brown hair, because of their ability to transform those base colors into palettes that are completely dazzling and alluring.

Lowlights are exactly like highlights, with one tiny exception:  Instead of removing color to create lighter strands that highlight the hair, the colorist uses color to create darker strands that lowlight, or add warmth to, the hair.

Lowlights are especially popular at summer’s end, when they’re used to counteract the over-bleaching caused by sun exposure and to return hair to a warmer shade in time for the fall.  Likewise, they are also used to return hair that’s been over-bleached by chemical services to a healthier-looking, more natural shade.

They’re also a wonderful choice for someone who wants to turn back the hands of time by putting a little more pepper back into their salt and pepper locks!

To increase the multi-dimensional effects of highlights and lowlights, colorists can use varying strengths of color lighteners – or different colors – on alternating foils during the procedures.

Every Which Way

Highlights and lowlights can be created in a number of ways – via foils (or highlighting paper), a technique called balyage, or a cap.

The most popular way is via foils (or highlighting paper).  In this method, the colorist selects strands of hair, places them on a piece of foil, uses a color brush to cover them with a hair lightener or color, depending on the desired effect, and then folds the bottom edge of the foil up to the top to sandwich in the hair.

Some colorists position a plexi-board between their chest and the client’s head to hold the foil in place, make the lightener or color application easier and get closer to the hair root.

The traditional technique by which a colorist chooses the strands of hair to be treated is called weaving.  Colorists choose a section of hair and then, using a metal-ended tail comb, weave out intermittent pieces, which are then placed on the foil for lightening or coloring.  A small, fine weave can be used to create a very subtle, natural effect, while a larger weave can be used to create a more funky, chunkier effect.

Sometimes a colorist will use a technique called slicing to choose the strands of hair to be processed.  Slicing is the simple selection of hair –sans weaving – for processing.  For example, a colorist who wants to add a few chunky highlights to frame the face is using slicing when selecting a section of hair for processing.

Balyage, which means to sweep in French, is a free-form painting technique that has become more popular in the last few years.   Instead of weaving or slicing and enlisting the use of foils, the colorist uses a color brush or a special dispensing tool to paint the hair with a lightener or color.

This process is suitable for the creation of more scattered highlights or lowlights and to painting the outer sheath – as opposed to the underside – of the hair.

Some colorists use foils to highlight the hair and balyage to add a few lowlights for greater dimension.

Caps – which are snuggly fitting headpieces covered with tiny holes – are used mostly for adding highlights or lowlights to very short hair.  The colorist places the cap (traditionally made of latex and rubber, but also available in foam and plastic) on the client’s head and then, using a crochet hook, pulls hair through the tiny holes.  The exposed hair is then covered with a lightener or color to produce the desired effect.

Everything In Its Place

There are several ways to describe the amount and placement of foil highlights and lowlights in the hair – notably full-head, half-head, partial-head and framing.

A full-head is obviously the most extensive of the choices, creating an all-over effect of highlighted hair.  A half-head usually refers to an area that reaches from the front and front-sides of the hair to the imaginary line where the ears end.  Although the term partial-head can refer to anything less than a full-head, it’s usually considered a somewhat open-ended term that refers to no specific area, but is less than a half-head.  Framing – a type of partial-head – refers to the placement of foils around the face to add brightness.

Well-Toned

Once highlighted hair has processed, it’s time to remove any highlighting aids (such as foils or a cap), shampoo the lightener out of the hair and apply a toner.  A toner, which can be a permanent, semi-permanent or demi-permanent color, does just what its name implies:  It lends a tone to the newly lightened strands of hair.

The nice thing about many non-permanent toners is that they gradually wash out of the hair, which allows for greater flexibility when it comes to changing to a different tone.