If you recently asked for highlights at the salon and left feeling like you stepped back two decades, you’re probably pretty frustrated. Stripey highlights were definitely in circa 2004, but the goal of today’s highlights is a blended look that simply adds texture and brightens natural hair color. We’ll tell you why this mishap happens, and why you should see a professional stylist to fix it.
What Causes Stripey Highlights?
Unnatural, streaky highlights can happen for several reasons. It’s common for clients to get these results at home with DIY kits since they aren’t trained in the proper techniques. But even professional stylists have been known to deliver stripey highlights if they aren’t clear about a client’s wishes for a more seamless look, or if they haven’t received proper instruction on achieving blended color.
Here are some things your stylist may have done to make your highlights look streaky:
The highlighted pieces were too wide. When too much hair is pulled into a foil, the result will definitely be a chunky or stripey look. Using more foils with thinner strands will make it more blended and natural.
Too much space was left between the foils. Highlights can be spaced from ¼ inch to an inch apart. The closer they are, the less noticeable, so if your stylist left an inch or more between highlights, the results will look stripey.
The contrasting color is too light. Highlights are meant to complement natural color, so the universal rule is to keep them within four shades of your base color. If the color used for your highlights is too stark of a contrast with the rest of your hair, it can make the hair look streaky rather than blended. (This can also happen if you asked for lowlights and the color was much darker than your natural hair color.)
The color was left on too long. The amount of time it takes for color to lift depends on the natural base tone and how light you want to go. For instance, dark brown hair has more melanin so it might take 30 minutes to lighten, while naturally blonde hair might only take 15 minutes to achieve the desired highlight color. But if bleach is left on the hair for too long, it will lift to a lighter tone than you’d planned, resulting in a more noticeable contrast.
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Is It Possible to Fix Stripey Highlights at Home?
Even if you’re extremely disappointed with your hair, you shouldn’t try to fix it at home by adding in more bleach since overbleached hair can be very damaging. It’s also not a good idea to attempt to correct your color by placing brown over blonde since it can turn green (this is why professionals use a color wheel when darkening light hair). In most cases the hair will need to be filled with another color before you can add dark back in.
If you can’t make it back to a salon right away, here are a few safe things you can try at home:
- Apply a toner. Highlights that are overly bright won’t blend well with your natural color, resulting in an undesirable stripey look. To reduce their brassy appearance, you can apply a toning gloss to help level things out. A Vakkar stylist would be happy to give you a product recommendation.
- Wash with purple shampoo. Purple shampoo has toner in it that will neutralize the yellow tone in color and make it brighten, so you will notice less brassy tones in the highlights and your natural color.
- Use a clarifying shampoo. Clarifying shampoo will slowly lift and fade hair dye from your hair without causing lasting damage. This is an option if you’re not comfortable.
How Color Specialists Can Make Your Highlights Look More Natural
Your best bet for fixing stripey or streaky highlights is to see a professional. At Vakkar, our color specialists have tricks up our sleeves to blend color beautifully so you’ll end up with a seamless, natural look.
Adding babylights is one solution, in which we add fine strands of color that’s a shade between the highlights and your natural color. We can also add thin strands of lowlights if that allows the hair to blend better.
Another option is to apply a root shadow. Since stripey highlights are most visible at the crown, we apply your natural color close to the root and then gradually lighten it so it fades into the highlighted hair. The result of this technique is a soft, gradient transition that makes the streaky highlights less noticeable as they grow out.
No matter how disappointed you are with results from another salon, chances are we can come up with a plan to make you happy while keeping your hair healthy. Our stylists strive to deliver cut and color solutions that bring out your natural beauty, and that fit your lifestyle. Contact Vakkar today to make an appointment. We can’t wait to discuss how we can help.
