Do You Plan to Lighten Your Hair for the Summer?

Although the sun lightens your locks a shade or two, most hair requires more than just a solar burst from our neighbor in the sky. Going lighter in the summer is not the same for everyone. Women with darker hair like glistening cool caramels, and blondes may crave brighter blonde hair.

In either situation, lightening your hair color means spending more time with your favorite stylist and entrusting her to not make a cotton ball out of your hair. Here are some tips for what you can expect out of your next lightening appointment. 

Lighten Blonde Hair for Summer

If your already light, as in already highlighted head to toe, instead of lightening the delicate ends and causing more damage, you can choose to lighten the natural hair at the root, and then touch up highlights and tone out any brassiness that’s crept its way into your blonde. This will make the entire root area of your hair brighter giving you the best look for summer. 

Instead of waiting longer to get a full head of highlights done again at the end of summer, an appointment can be made mid summer to touch up the root only and tone again keeping your look fresh instead of having that end of summer root lag. Also, don’t forget to tone your blonde locks with toning shampoo and conditioner since the sun can cause your toners to fade much quicker than in the winter months.

How to Lighten Red Hair

Red hair don’t care? Add some lighter and brighter pieces of red to kick off a hot start to the summer hair trend. Create a natural or dramatic effect in your ends with a gradual blonde balayage melted in, creating movement and dimension within red. 

Use blonde highlights to create some pop of light at the root that shimmers down to the ends to give your hair a dramatic makeover. Also, Don’t forget about Coppers! A copper, while usually associated with winter looks, can be added to darker reds that don’t want to go completely blonde with the lighter pieces in their hair. Coppers can give the deep red colors a hint of sun kiss for the summer and can be easily covered over when winter comes back around. Whether the copper and blonde is balayage or foiled, fiery red hair is hot!

Lighten Brown Hair

With such a wide variety of the shades of brown, the possibilities for lightening are almost endless. Assuming that color has not already been applied to the hair previously, the different shades of chocolate can be spiced up with any latte flavor of your choice.  Whether the technique used is balayage, foil, etc. 

Lightening any brunette can take some time to get used to if the result is super blonde. However, just lightening for the summer can take a brunette from dark diva brown to the soft looks of Jennifer Lopez. Summer highlighting is not the time to do big chunks of blonde streaks in brown hair. That is a look that is for any time of year, and honestly so out of style, we do not recommend it at our hair salon.

When lightening brown hair, it is important to remember that deep within the cortex of the hair is the dreaded red undertones. Everyone has them. If your stylist does not lighten the hair past all the red undertones, the look can turn brassy during the summer. Chlorine and the sun can make these undertones show very quickly after a recent appointment. Even if a blonde is not exactly the look you are going for, the hair can be toned down to caramel, but it is imperative to get out of the red stage. 

Meraki Hair Studio is here to answer any of your questions about highlights. Just give us a call or contact Meraki Hair Studio today to learn more!