Highlights can look great, but up-keeping them can be expensive. If you’re trying to save some money, but still want to look good, then you can dye your own highlights yourself at home rather than paying to go into a salon.
First of all, pick what kind of highlights you want. Some people like a few big bold chunks, whereas other people like lots of little strands. Look at pictures of hairstyles (try a Google image search for highlighted hair) to help you decide. Lots of little strands throughout your hair, but primarily on the top, gives a more natural look. Big bold chunks gives a more modern, funky feel.
Next pick out your colour. For a natural look, you generally want to go a shade lighter than your hair colour. So if you have dark brown hair, go for medium brown or auburn highlights. If you have light brown hair, add blonde highlights. If you’re not trying to look natural, then you can choose whatever colour you want. It can be very striking to have very dark or light hair with bright colour highlights (for example, pink hair with blonde highlights, or black hair with purple highlights).
How you dye your hair depends on what colours and style you have chosen.
If you want to, you can buy a home hair dye kit specifically for highlighting your hair. Some of these kits even come with two colours if you want to dye the majority of your hair one colour and the highlights another. You don’t have to have one of these kits to dye highlights, though, so if you can’t find the colour you want, just buy any hair dye box that you like.
To dye small natural highlights:
If you want to dye small, natural highlights, the best way to do it is to separate the highlighted hair from the rest of your hair. In the highlighting hair dye kits, they have special caps to put on. They look like shower caps, but with little holes in them. Then you use a little hook to pull hair sections through the holes. If you don’t buy the special kit, you can create the same thing at home by cutting small holes in a shower cap and pulling hair through either with a small crochet hook or the end of a fine comb. Otherwise you can just try to be careful and get as little dye as possible on the other hair-but you might end up with some bits dyed that you didn’t intend to colour.
If you’re dying your hair this way, pull the hair through the holes so that it is separated out. Dye it, being careful to spread the dye evenly from root to tips. Wash out the dye first with the cap on (bend your head over the bath or a sink), and then take off the cap and wash and condition all of your hair.
To dye chunky highlights:
To dye bigger sections, you don’t need the special cap or hook. Just pick out the sections that you want to dye. One at a time, starting with the sections you want to be most noticeable, spread the dye evenly and thickly from root to tip of the hair. Then wrap that section of hair in tin foil. The tin foil will not absorb the dye, and will keep the dye from smudging onto the rest of your hair. After the allotted amount of time, remove the tin foil, wash your hair until the water runs clean, and condition well.
