Past hair coloring techniques often made it necessary to camouflage a “dye job” with a perky cut or a wig. Lightening jet-black hair meant hours of bleaching that left hair looking more like yellow straw than platinum blond. Towheads, who wanted a darker shade, were often left with a gothic look before gothic was a trend and those looking for strawberry blond commonly got fire-engine red. Of course, modern hair coloring techniques made fire-engine red a fashion trend instead of a hair coloring catastrophe!

Modern hair coloring techniques add true dimension to style right down to the natural movement of your hair. Highlights, twilights, and lowlights are just a few of the choices that enhance both your face and your hairstyle. In addition, hair coloring techniques include veiling and chunking.

Types of Hair Coloring Techniques

Highlights: Probably one of the first innovations in hair coloring, highlights brighten and add shine. Highlights work best in warm shades of gold, honey, amber, and reds and can be applied with permanent hair color or created with over-the-counter hair mascara, such as Christian Dior's Mascara Flash Highlights or Revlon Professional Luminates, both of which wash out after one shampoo.

Twilighting: When you want a lighter hair color to show a subtle change, twilighting is the answer. Twilighting tones down too-bright hair colors by adding a few darker tones. Twilights are closely related to lowlights.

Lowlights: A hair coloring technique that adds real depth to hair color. Like twilights, low lights add darker tones and soften the look of over-lightened hair or add dimension to hair color that looks flat. A skilled stylist can weave up to three different colors into your hair by pulling a few strands here and there through a weave cap for a subtle look or foiling chunks of your hair for a dramatic, trendy look.

Veiling: Brightens and enhances old flat hair color by applying a semi-permanent glaze in a richer tone over a permanent shade.

Chunking: Takes large, random sections of hair and infuses them with new color. Chunking is a hair coloring technique that gives dramatic impact to your hairstyle, often by adding bright, trendy colors to natural hair color.

Hair Coloring Technique Processes

Weave caps: Used most often in highlighting, twilighting, and lowlighting, your stylist pulls small strands through holes in the weave cap. The effect is usually a subtle change that enhances your basic hair color. Highlighting with a weave cap also helps to camouflage gray or roots growing back after a permanent hair color application.

Foiling: Your stylist places sections of hair onto rectangular sheets of foil and applies color or lightener, folding the foil to keep the color in place and away from other sections. Of all highlighting techniques, foiling can be applied closest to the root.

Baliage: A great application for textured, natural curls, or wavy hair. Your stylist selects specific areas and hand paints them with color. This dramatic implementation of a hair coloring technique leaves you with a very “personal” appearance!

It’s important to note that although kits are available for most all hair coloring techniques, professional stylists have the skill that comes with experience. Especially for hard to color shades like gray, platinum, and black hair, it’s wisest to consult a professional before you try a new hair color technique at home!