Highlights have been around for a long time. Either someone has gotten them done on their hair because an actress was rocking it back in the day or they just love the look of chunky streaks of color in their hair. Well, hair color and highlights have come a long way and their are many type of highlights now. Here is a comparison between highlights, lowlights, and babylights.

A Comparison Between Hair Highlights, Lowlights, And Babylights

The Look

First things first, highlights, babylights, and lowlights, even though they sound the same, differ a lot in how they look.

Highlights

Highlights is the normal and common procedure of coloring in strands of hair with a lighter color than your natural hair color and that is what leads to a beautiful defining look. Sometimes foil can be used to give the highlights a crisp and edgy look and other times it’s not.

Regardless, in highlights, either bleach is used sparingly or a lot, depending on the color you’re going for and how you want it to stand out.

Lowlights

As far as lowlights are concerned, they are also individual strands of colored hair but the main difference is the color of these strands. Unlike highlights, lowlights are darker strands against your lighter natural hair. This is a really common technique that a lot of light-haired women tend to gravitate towards to add that depth and dimension to their seemingly flat light hair.

Lowlights are amazing because you don’t need to use bleach since going from a lighter shade to a darker shade is easy and your hair can show better results.

Babylights

As for babylights, these strands vary in thickness. Unlike highlights and lowlights that are reasonably thick strands of hair through the hair, babylights are quite thin and they are almost blended in with your natural hair. Also, the placement of babylights is around the hairline and on the sides of the face to frame the shape.

Babylights are very subtle and they don’t usually stand out when your hair is down. However, that’s not to say that they don’t look amazing. Babylights are barely there and they look mesmerizing. They’re amazing if you want to try something new, but want to keep your hair looking normal and not as drastic.

The Procedure

Next up is the procedure and how these babies are achieved. Even though the technique is generally the same, like making sections and coloring them in and waiting for the strands to develop the color, there’s still a slight difference in each of the procedures, hence leading to different results.

Highlights

When it comes to highlights, you want to make the hair stand out against your natural dark hair, so first, bleach is used to ensure that the natural darker color is cut down to create a base for the color to develop. Then, the hair dye is applied and then it is left to develop, and then it is washed off to reveal the results.

Lowlights

As for lowlights, they are quicker to do, since there is no step of bleach involved. You are going darker on the strands and your hair is lighter than the color you chose for lowlights, so the color is applied directly onto the sections and then tucked in foil to develop.

Once the color is achieved to your liking, the mane is washed and then the results will be in front of you.

Babylights

When it comes to babylights, the color is applied a bit differently. Even though the steps for doing babylights are the same, the technique is slightly different. The color you’re choosing can be light or dark, so there’s no set rule for choosing the hue.

The main technique lies in how to make thin and even sections along the hairline and on the face-framing pieces of the head. Then, the dye is applied like paint, rather than strategically, to make the strands blend in with each other. That’s how you achieve the beautiful, almost Balayage-like look on your hair, but it’s micro-highlights.

The Color Used

The next main difference between highlights, lowlights, and babylights is the color used in making the hair look unique.

Highlights

When it comes to highlights, as the name suggests, you want to highlight the hair and this is done by lightening the hair strands and making them pop when they lay against the darker mass of hair.

This is why a lighter color, about 3 to 4 shades lighter than your natural hair color is used for highlights for the best results. This makes the hair look less flat and more detailed, thanks to the light strands standing out.

Lowlights

As for lowlights, again the name says it all. Lowlights are meant to make the hair look less bright and more deeper and this is why the choice of color for the section of strands is 3 to 4 shades darker than your natural hair color. The contrast of the darker strands against the lighter natural hair color is to die for and it makes the hair look a bit darker and mysterious.

Lighter hair can have a tendency to look bland and lowlights are the perfect way to bring back that depth into the hair and make it look amazing.

Babylights

Moving on to babylights, the choice of color doesn’t matter, since it’s not about making the strands of hair pop or deepening them in color. Babylights is more concerned with mixing the strands into your natural hair and making it look somewhat different but still the same.

The result should be like weaving individual strands of hair through your natural hair, so that they are impossible to make out, but with the right hair flip and the reflection of light, babylights will show themselves in the most beautiful of ways. This is why babylights are more than just strands of light or dark hair.

Cost & Maintenance

Lastly, the maintenance and cost of highlights, lowlights, and babylights is important to know.

Cost

Let’s get the cost out of the way first because no matter how beautiful a hair coloring technique is, if it’s too expensive, then it’s not an option unless there’s an exception. So, highlights, lowlights as well as babylights aren’t that expensive.

Highlights can be more time-consuming since bleaching of the hair is involved, but other than that, they’re pretty much in the same price spectrum, give or take a few bucks.

Maintenance

As for maintaining highlights, lowlights, and babylights, the roots are going to be a troublesome area to deal with. When your hair grows, the highlights, lowlights, or babylights will sink down the hair length, and your natural hair will grow from the roots. This can create a horrible clash of colors and the best bet is to get the roots touched up from time to time.

As for washing dyed hair, you want to switch to a sulfate-free shampoo, as this is going to prevent the hair dye from fading away prematurely and your hair will also look and feel healthy, bouncy, and shiny.

Conclusion

Highlights, lowlights, and babylights are from the same category, but put them together side by side, and you’ll see the difference clear as day. And then there is balayage as well which you can read about in our previous blogs. To get any type of hair highlights, visit hair salons specializing in color Rockville.