Balayage Blog Archives

You might have noticed the increased popularity of a natural-looking highlighting technique called balayage, which gives hair a sense of softness at the top with lighter ends. Maybe you have noticed the trend on celebrities such as Halle Berry, Gisele Bündchen, Jennifer Aniston, and Jessica Biel. Or, perhaps you have seen your friends adopt the style. Either way, your curiosity about this coloring technique may have you asking if it is right for you.

The great news is unless you have a particularly short hairstyle (such as a pixie cut), balayage can work for your hair type. Read on to learn more about this beautiful technique and how you can make the most of it.

What Is Balayage?

Balayage is a technique invented in Paris in the 1970s. With this technique, the stylist paints the color onto your hair freehand. The term comes from the French word meaning “to sweep,” referring to how a lightener or a color has been “swept” through your hair with a brush and a paddle board.

Balayage offers many benefits, including:

• The ability to create a custom look to enhance your face’s natural beauty
• Reduced maintenance compared to traditional highlights
• Less heat-related damage than other hair coloring techniques
• Applicability to all types of hair

Balayage for Different Hair Types

The balayage technique can create a unique look for people with all hair types. Those with light hair often find blonde hues the most flattering. Darker hair can look stunning with brown, chocolate, caramel, or cinnamon highlights. Your skin tone and eye color will help determine what looks best.

Here are some ways a balayage treatment can enhance the look of different types of hair.

Wavy Hair

For many, balayage is synonymous with the laid-back beachiness of a wavy head of hair with sun-lightened strands. Balayage with mildly contrasting colors can add considerable definition and dimension to your hair texture if you have wavy hair.

Straight Hair

While many people associate the technique with wavy hair, balayage can also look stunning on straight strands. Many hair colorists consider silky straight hair a wonderful way to show off their artistic skills. Streaks of color can add a lovely sense of visual depth.

Curly Hair

Balayage can be an excellent way to bring out the beautiful texture of your curls. A few strokes of lightener can help highlight each curve of the natural coils of hair. Choosing a hue that is about two shades brighter than your base color can give you a flattering, natural-looking glow.

Common Types of Balayage

One of the main benefits of balayage is that stylists can customize it to suit your wants and needs. Some of the common types of balayage you can consider include:

• Full balayage – This technique applies highlights throughout your hair.
• Partial balayage – A partial treatment applies highlights only to specific areas of your hair.
• Subtle balayage – This soft variation applies color just to areas of the hair that catch the light most naturally.
• American balayage – While traditional balayage is a freehand technique, the American variation includes foiling. Your stylist will apply foil highlights and brush-paint the hair that remains between the foils. This technique works particularly well for people with dark hair.
• Reverse balayage – This trendy technique is excellent for blondes and brondes, using darker colors at the end. Think of the result as something that falls between a balayage and an ombré.
• Babylights / Micro-highlights – This subtle technique employs particularly fine highlights. While this technique requires a lot of time to apply, the effect lasts longer than all other balayage varieties.

Colorists are constantly inventing new ways of working with the balayage technique. Speak to a certified balayage specialist if there is a new variety you would like to explore.

Caring for Balayage Hair

As with all hair coloring techniques, balayage can dry out your hair. Speak with your stylist to find the best products and develop a good conditioning strategy. You may also find it helpful to schedule regular appointments to restore, tone, and nourish your locks. After all, balayage looks most attractive on healthy hair.

Contact Therapy Hair Studio Today

Therapy Hair Studio has offered an excellent variety of services to Houston clients since 2008. Our fantastic team of stylists employs high-quality products and cutting-edge styling techniques. We are proud to serve many satisfied clients across the Houston area, and we look forward to helping you achieve your desired balayage look.

If you are interested in making a balayage appointment, call us at (713) 355-4247 or contact us online for an appointment with a certified stylist.

It might be challenging to decide between balayage and traditional hair coloring when it comes time to color your hair. Each technique is different and has its own benefits, so it’s important to consider your desired look before choosing between them. This article will share what sets these services apart so you can pick the one that will get you the desired results. 

What Is Balayage?

Balayage is a specialized technique in which highlights are painted in a gentle, sweeping motion, delivering an impactful yet natural effect. Since the color is brushed onto the hair’s surface, the result is a subtle, sun-kissed luster rather than the stark contrast of traditional highlights. Instead of bold stripes, picture gentle ribbons.

The subtle contrast between your base color and the lighter, balayage-highlighted sections of your hair is a hallmark of this technique. Because of how well it mixes with your natural color, balayage requires minimal effort in maintenance using the correct products and procedures.

What Is Traditional Hair Coloring?

With traditional hair coloring techniques like highlights, a stylist places foils over small sections of hair before applying bleach, leaving certain strands of hair lighter than the rest. This leaves a more pronounced and noticeable result, with the color shifting back and forth between the natural shade and highlights.

If you prefer subtle highlights, babylights might be the route of interest. This method of coloring hair is meant to look like the naturally multi-toned hair seen in young kids. Using babylights to frame your face can give off a subtle but noticeable shine.

Balayage vs.Traditional Hair Coloring: Key Differences

The primary distinctions between balayage and traditional hair coloring are as follows:

1. Boldness: Balayage is a more understated technique for coloring hair that imitates a sun-kissed appearance. On the other hand, the contrast between the natural and bleached hair colors in classic highlights is significantly more pronounced, giving the style a bolder appearance. 
2. Dimension: Balayage creates depth because the stylist paints on the bleach, varying the thickness and range of each stroke to create a unique, natural effect. When entire strands of hair are bleached completely, while other strands receive only a small bit or none, the final product has a range of tones that result in understated highlights. In contrast, the effect of traditional hair coloring is starker since individual sections of hair are either bleached in foils or left in their natural color.
   
   
3. Application Area: When you get balayage done, your highlights go from the mid-shaft down to the tips of your hair. With traditional hair coloring, the strands are saturated in dye or bleach from the very base of the hair strand to its end. 
4. Maintenance: Because balayage is painted on, and does not begin at the root of the hair, it requires much less maintenance than traditional highlights. This technique creates a more subtle gradient effect, helping it to look more natural as the hair grows. On the other hand, the difference between the lighter color and the natural shade of your hair is more pronounced with highlights; thus, they need to be touched up more frequently to keep their effect and avoid deeper, contrasting roots. 
5. Level of Customization: The balayage method is highly adaptable, allowing stylists to highlight areas custom to the client, including natural framing of the face. In contrast, traditional highlights leave little room for creativity and can be more challenging to deliver natural-looking results. 

Balayage or Hair Coloring – Which is Best for Me?

When you book your first visit with one of our many professional and expert stylists, you’ll be able to talk about your dream results! Your stylist can walk you through your options while assessing your current hair.

Each technique yields a distinctive look, and the final decision is yours! Our team of specialists can help you make the most suitable decision for you. 

Are you ready for your hair makeover? Therapy Hair Salon‘s skilled coloring team is prepared to take your call. With our help, you can achieve the hair color you’ve always wanted. Contact us today!

Balayage. Just the word sounds so sophisticated, probably because it is French. In French, it means “sweeping,” and essentially, that is what you get when you ask for balayage, a gentle sweeping of color that creates a natural, almost “lived-in” look. Yet, that description still doesn’t quite capture the beauty of this coloring technique. Think of tresses that have turned just oh-so sun-kissed as you’ve laid out on a golden sandy beach all summer long. Or the ever-elusive ideal where your roots are just perfectly grown out and your ends are gorgeously glowing with a subtly lighter shade. (Yeah, like that ever happens in real life!)

What is balayage? The team at Therapy Hair Studio demystifies the term and helps you decide if the technique is right for you.

What Is Balayage?

Balayage isn’t just a hair-industry buzzword to get you to spend more at the salon. It is a technique where a colorist will free-hand paint soft and flowing highlights onto the hair. By painting the hair with a lighter shade, a colorist can achieve a subtler and more graduated highlighting effect. Think soft ribbons as opposed to stripy highlights.

What’s the Difference?

Balayage is sometimes hijacked as an umbrella term for color. It isn’t. Asking for a balayage will give you very different results than highlights or even ombre. Ombre is a similar technique, but the results are much starker and more dramatic between the colors instead of the natural transition created by balayage. Highlights and lowlights also employ a different technique where stripes of color are placed closer to the scalp. Most colorists will use foils to create highlights and lowlights.

The Benefits of Balayage  

Since the technique creates a more natural, softer, highlighting effect, it is much easier to maintain. The technique is meant to give the appearance of “grown out” roots but in the most beautiful and flattering way possible. Opting for a balayage can mean fewer trips to the salon. It can also mean much less work to maintain than other types of coloring processes. This technique also tends to be less damaging.

Another benefit of balayage is that because it can be more of a sweeping, free-hand technique, your results can be different than anyone else’s. You will have a unique and gorgeous look all to yourself.

Who Can Get Balayage? 

Balayage isn’t just for blondes. The technique can create beautiful results on a variety of different hair colors. Balayage can brighten blondes but also add dimension to brunettes. Talk to a colorist about your hair color goal and the amount of maintenance you want to put into your color. From there, an experienced colorist can determine which shades will give you the optimum color result. Caramel, golden, ash, and chocolate colors can all create beautiful results depending on your base color.

Balayage is a beautiful color technique that can add a subtle and natural brilliance to your hair color.

Ready to take the plunge? Contact the experienced coloring team at Therapy Hair Salon in Houston today for an appointment by calling (713) 355-HAIR. We want to help give you the hair color of your dreams. Bring us your dreams today.