Traditional Foiling or (Highlights) vs. Modern Blonding Techniques
Back when I started doing hair in the 90s the hair color world had almost finished moving from the old hair lightening technique (“Frosting” or pulling hair through a plastic cap with a crochet hook and bleaching) to the much more flexible and predictable technique of “Foiling” or “weaving” or “Highlighting” (using a special comb to weave out individual little strands or chunks of hair that are then separated out from the other hair by using foil and colorized or lightened) that most people are familiar with today.
Times Have Changed
Over the decades, what I now call “classic highlighting” has expanded into dozens of advanced methods that are much more difficult to define, implement correctly and price out. Here is a non exhaustive list that even with no additional detail might just make your head spin…
- Balayage
- Teasy Lights
- Bronde
- Baby Lights
- Color Melt
- Root Shadow
- Foialayage
- Color Blocking
- Micro Slices
- Tip Out
- Money Piece
- Strand Light
- Ombre Highlights
- Sombre
- Peek a Boo Highlights
- Face Framing Highlights
- Multidimensional Highlights
- Rainbow or Vivid Lights
Add to this list social media, photoshop manipulations and filters and everyone’s ability to immediately pull up whatever celebrity stylists are up to and you can begin to understand how complicated the answer to “I just want some highlights, how much will it cost?” becomes. What used to be a straightforward world where everyone was looking for the same basic thing with some slight variation has morphed into a magical, multi layered Unicorn world where many people are looking to do their own unique thing and then change that thing every appointment.
So We Need To Work Together
How do salon owners, stylists and customers navigate these treacherous shoals? If a customer books a highlight (which stylists used to be able to easily double book every 45 minutes… basically allowing them to double their hourly income and keep costs down for guests) but really has a picture of Modern Blonding or Magical Unicorn Hair in their head you can see the problem. The stylist may need to book 4 or 5 (or even 6 or 8) hours straight to achieve the look the guest is after. A good stylist is worth between $100-$150 an hour for advanced color. This is how we get to color transformations that can cost between $500 and $1000 bucks (or more)! If there’s not clarity on all this before a service begins the negative results can be quite predictable.
Here's What We're Gonna Do!
Watch The Video
If you're over 40
If you're under 40
Don't Blow It Now!
Now after reading this, you may be thinking “I don’t wanna spend hundreds of dollars on my hair color and Salon ABC down the road quoted me $150 for a foil and a haircut!”. A little advice here just… like I tell my kids. It’s bullshit. This is not how the world works. No colorist capable of getting that icy blond Balayage you’re after charges $150 for a cut and complex color. I’m sorry if that’s what you were used to paying back in the day or if that’s all your parents can afford. For $150 you’ll either get a quick classic foil and trim or you’ll get a rookie who says a lot of “yeah sure no problem, I can do that” and then crowns you with a fried out halo of yellow/orange tragedy. How do I know? Because we fix these disasters. Every month. They’re just as expensive to fix as they are to create so you might wanna keep that in mind if you’re tempted to lean cheap.
