Choosing the right highlight colors

One of the keys to great, natural-looking highlights is knowing what shades will work best with your natural hair color. Below are a few tips from Kim that should help you get the perfect highlight - or lowlight - shades for your hair:

• Lowlights for platinum blonde hair - If you have borderline white hair, a great option for you is to weave in some lowlights in a deeper blonde color. This will require touchups every three to four weeks, and over time you can gradually move to a darker color ... if that's what you want.
• Highlights or lowlights for light blonde hair - Light blonds have tons of freedom when it comes to highlights. Choose a tone that's golden or cool ... even the lightest highlights can look natural on a light blond." Dark blonde lowlights also look amazing on light blonde hair.
• Highlights or lowlights for medium blonde to dark blonde hair - For medium blonds, you can go with an almost 'bronde' look with golden or honey highlights. If you're more of a dirty blond, add taupe highlights or dark blonde lowlights. Both these looks will add dimension to your hair color.
• Highlights for light brown hair - To add a "wow"-factor to light brown hair, incorporate more blonde balayage throughout. And blonde flamboyage (a combination of balayage and ombre) is another wonderful choice for light browns.
• Highlights for dark brown hair - To add vibrancy to dark brown hair, ask Kim for highlights that are one shade lighter than your current color, and balayage is a great choice to mix in different tones of that shade.
• Highlights for black hair - Highlights in black hair will help soften your look. But make sure you stay within the tone that would be closest to how the sun would naturally lighten your hair. Highlights that are too light can look artificial. Kim recommends choosing chocolate tones, like coffee bean or milk chocolate.
• Highlights for reddish hair - For a fabulous look, try "baby lights" one-to-two shades lighter than your starting color. Redheads should almost always go for warm golden highlights. If you have a lot of pink in your skin color, go for cool strawberry blonde highlights.

For most of us it is really important not to go too light. To get the best results, go no more than two shades lighter than your starting point, otherwise your hair can look too unnatural. And be sure to use a quality shampoo.

As always, feel free to talk with Kim if you have any questions.


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