One of the quickest ways to brighten up your complexion and look more radiant is to add a few well-placed highlights in your hair. The perfect shade that complements your natural hair tone and the skills of a hair professional who knows exactly where and how to apply highlights can do everything from bringing out the color in your eyes to subtracting years from your appearance.
But hair highlighting mistakes can have the opposite effect: they can actually make your skin appear more sallow and age you. If your goal is to look more youthful, contemporary, and rested, avoid these four hair highlighting mistakes like the plague.
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Using ashy tones
We love a cool blonde as much as the next woman, but ashy tones aren't always as forgiving as highlighting with warmth. "Warm, golden honeyed tones are much more flattering in general as we age," says Julie Featherman, owner of juju salon & organics. "Cool, ashy white blonde highlights are hard to pull off without the counter-balance of a natural youthful glow." A few golden or caramel highlights around the face may be all you need to add pep and polish to your look.
Over-highlighting your hair
If you have more highlights in your hair than naturally colored strands, you lose the contrast between dark and light that makes your color interesting and youthful (think of the way a child's hair looks after spending a week on the beach). "Calm down your color," Featherman says. "If you were a 'dye' hard highlighter, try softening your look with an all over softer blonde with just a few face-framing highlights."
Don't shy away from gray
Many women are embracing their gray strands and working with them, instead of attempting to stay on top of concealing them the second they grow in — which can be exhausting. "Keep the highlights, lose the root touch-up," Featherman says. "Grow into a more natural look and ask your stylist to continue highlighting your hair, but forgo the root touch up that completely covers your gray roots. Try lowlights and highlights to add color dimension to your strands. This helps provide a more 'believable' overall color. Many clients actually like seeing a little bit of gray in their hair."
Beware of outdated trends
The problem with following hair color trends is that, if you don't keep up, they can eventually prove aging, says NYC Hairstyling Pro Jenna Mast. Here are three past color trends Mast recommends avoiding:
Chunky foil highlights: "They add years and make you look stuck in time," Mast says. "They're dating and make new growth super obvious."
High contrast balayage (super dark base with bright or "beachy" pieces): "New growth becomes very obvious and the high contrast can bring out the contrast in our skin as well (wrinkles, under eye bags, etc)," Mast says.
Ombré: "While it may make color touch-ups super easy, the once super popular young look can age you," Mast says. "It's really something that we don't see very much anymore, except from women trying to look younger. My advice is balayage and baby lights. Babylights blend white and gray hair and are really soft and subtle. Balayage gives the pop of brightness and can be as subtle or as loud as you want."