Balayage vs. Highlights: Comparing the Hair Color Techniques

Balayage (from the French word for “sweep”) is a hair-lightening process in which the colorist uses a small brush to apply bleach, hand-painting it thinly at the roots and gradually increasing the thickness as they move toward the ends. The result of balayage highlights is a subtle, more dimensional look than traditional highlights. Related techniques include highlights and ombré.

Traditional highlights are a hair-lightening technique in which the colorist uses foils on strips of hair to apply bleach, resulting in some strips of hair that are lighter than the natural color. The result of traditional foil highlights is a bolder, more obvious look, in which the hair color alternates between the natural shade and the lightened color. Related techniques include balayage, babylights, and lowlights.

Balayage and highlights are two hair color techniques that differ in a few main ways, including:

1. 1. Boldness: Balayage is a subtler hair treatment that more closely mimics the natural look of sun-kissed hair. Traditional highlights have a much stronger look since the hair color alternates more obviously between the natural hair color and the bleached shade.
2. 2. Dimension: Balayage hair has a multi-dimensional look since the hairstylist uses a hand-painting technique to vary the thickness and reach of each bleach application. Since certain areas of hair may receive the full bleach effect and others only receive a small amount of bleach or none at all, the end result has several tones that create subtle highlights. On the other hand, highlights produce a much more all-or-nothing look, in which strips of hair either receive bleach treatment in foils or remain the base color.
3. 3. Maintenance: The hand-painted application makes balayage a low-maintenance alternative to highlights. Since the balayage technique has an ombré effect, it has a more natural look as it grows out. In contrast, highlights show a stronger demarcation line between lightened hair and the natural root, requiring more regular touch-ups to maintain the highlighted look.
4. 4. Price: Since balayage requires more care and attention from the colorist, it usually costs at least twenty-five percent more than highlights.
5. 5. Technique: The key difference between balayage and highlights is in the technique the stylist uses. For balayage, they use a freehand technique to apply the bleach, varying the thickness between root and tips; for highlights, they use aluminum foil pieces to apply bleach to individual sections of hair.

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