Tips Before Getting Curly Hair Highlights

If you naturally have curly hair, you are fortunate. Thanks to the unique configuration of the strands, certain types of highlights look truly amazing on curly hair.

In the world of salon coloring, they prefer to create images that are as close to natural as possible. For this purpose, individual strands are dyed in colors with gold, caramel, and honey tints, making it possible to achieve sun glare. On curls, this type of coloring looks the best.

Curly hair highlights allow you to:

• Get extra volume by vertically stretching the color and applying multiple tones.
• Make your hairstyle bright, effective, and dynamic.
• Hide facial skin imperfections and significantly rejuvenate the wearer.
• Correct the shape of the oval face, removing angularity or roundness.
• Grow your curls, as you don't need to tint the roots often.

The only drawback of this option is the high cost of the procedure, primarily due to the novelty and popularity of certain techniques.

If you naturally have curly hair, this means that they have a more porous structure. Consequently, the selected dye is activated on them much faster. In this case, experienced craftsmen try to reduce the exposure time of the hair bleach.

Curly hair highlights are contraindicated in case of:

• Pre-coloring with henna or basma (6 months have not passed since the time of dyeing).
• Previously done perm (since chemical reagents have a detrimental effect on the curls, you need to wait at least a month and then bleach the strands).
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding (due to the use of ammonia dyes and perhydrol, which is part of the oxygenate, you can harm the mother’s and the baby's bodies).
• The presence of allergic reactions to chemical reagents contained in the dye (before coloring with a specific dye, be sure to test the pigment for allergies, which will be manifested by redness on the skin or swelling).

It is also not recommended to perform highlighting on strands previously dyed with permanent dye. If you've already decided to take this step, choose the suitable bleach and color.

Choose the suitable hair highlight styles

Among the different hair highlight styles, only a few will look great on wavy hairstyles. Among them:

• Balayage. It suits long to medium hair lengths. It provides dyeing of individual curls, making a significant indent from the roots. It stretches the color vertically without contrasting borders. 
• Frost. It is specially designed for curly hair. Quite a simple procedure for applying the composition with your fingertips. Hair is pre-washed and dried with a hairdryer. No need to comb or split strands. 
• Peek-a-Boo. This option will suit slightly curled short curls to highlight hair. Thanks to highlighting the bangs and strands at the temple, dynamism, and volume are achieved, while the coloring is more gentle.
• Partial veil dyeing. It involves highlighting only the top layer of the hairstyle. Achieved smooth transitions of shades from top to bottom.
• Illuminations. Provides for coloring the lower curled strands in colors that are several tones lighter than the base one. Due to such soft transitions, you can achieve the effect of highlighting the hair.
• Highlights through the braid. The salon master makes several braids along the entire length, on which pigment is applied with a brush. When the hair is loosened, beautiful, chaotic vertical lines are obtained, successfully intertwined with natural wavy strands.
• Venetian highlighting. Assumes chaotic shading of color on separately selected strands. Drying takes place outdoors, without the use of foil.

All these methods involve incomplete coloring, so highlight hair is a gentle way to get a rich and bright color.

Color matching for highlight hair

If you want to highlight curly hair, making the image more natural, then lighten the strands in several tones. You can experiment with unique colors: cherry, pink, blue to achieve a more extravagant look. Color highlighting is suitable for self-confident and creative individuals.

Color selection for curly hair highlights is carried out depending on the color type:

• Girls with pale skin and light eyes should choose cool shades (ash, graphite, muted salmon, or nordic blond).
• Warm colors (all shades of gold, beige, red) are suitable for beauties with peach skin and any eye color.
• For red-haired ladies, amber or cognac shades will be the best option.
• We recommend blondes to use many shades of blond and a nut color for back highlighting.

Curly hair highlights

Before carrying out the procedure, you need to choose the right dye and oxygen. If you want to lighten a strand, purchase:

• Brightening powder.
• Oxygenate and tonic.
• Dye cream together with an oxidizing agent.
• Special wax dye for highlighting.
• Ammonia-free dyes can shade the color in several shades.

Fair-haired beauties who want to make their hair darker make no sense to acquire an oxidizer.

When choosing an oxygenating agent, be guided by the following recommendations:

• You have light blond thin curls; buy 3% oxygen.
• Brown-haired women with normal hair types should use 6-9% reagent.
• Girls with coarse and dark hair will have to choose a 12% oxidizer for lightening.

If you have very dark curls and want to achieve a blond lock, you may have to lighten it several times. Having decided on hair highlight styles and pigment color, you need to arm yourself with a couple of hours of free time and carefully follow our advice.

Balayage hair highlight style

1. Comb the hair well and divide it into strands.
2. Tie the strands into ponytails, placing the elastic bands below eye level.
3. Apply the diluted dye to the ends up to the elastic line. Wrap the curls in foil and wait 30 minutes.
4. Unfold the strands. Using a brush, use random strands to blend the color just above the rubber bands, making a spade over the already colored areas. Wait another 10 minutes.
5. Now rinse your hair thoroughly with warm water and use a conditioner balm.
6. If you want to make the border between the base color and the lightened strands more visible, use a foam sponge. You can brush off the dye from the ends with a regular comb of hair to achieve softness in the transitions.

Hair highlight style hoarfrost

1. Before applying the dye, wash your hair well with the shampoo that you always use. Dry your curls with a hairdryer, preferably by tilting your head to achieve maximum hair lifting and more volume. To fix the effect, you can spray your hair with varnish.
2. Dilute the dye with a hair bleach in a 1: 1 ratio.
3. Using the foil, the oxidizer is distributed to the ends of the curls in a circular motion. You can also apply the composition with your fingertips after protecting them with gloves.
4. If you want a softer color transition, do not wrap the curls in foil, leaving the dye to interact with oxygen. To create contrasting transitions, professionals recommend wrapping the strands in foil.
5. Wait 30-40 minutes, depending on the expected effect.
6. The curls are washed under running warm water and must be moistened with a conditioner balm.
7. If you only used hair bleach to remove yellowness and give a special color to your curls, be sure to carry out toning. For this purpose, you can take tint tonics, mousses, and balms.

The toning procedure is best done the next day after coloring, allowing your curls to recover after lightening.

Curly hair highlights with highlight hair from inside

This season’s trend is partial coloring of the strands located on the lower layers of the curls.

Stages of coloring:

1. Take the top layer of curls and pin it with clips.
2. Using a comb with a sharp end, separate the bottom layer of the hair strands, which cannot be dyed (we do not touch it).
3. Choose not very thick strands, and color over them with chaotic lines.
4. Separate a thin layer of curls again and dye the strand in the same way.
5. Leave the applied dye to activate in the fresh air for 30-40 minutes.
6. Rinse your hair.
7. If you want the image to be as harmonious as possible, do not try to choose strands of the same thickness.

Read also:

Which Hairstyles Can You Make For Curly Hair?