What is the Difference Between Highlights and Balayage

The key difference between highlights and balayage is that highlights are a foiling technique, whereas balayage is a visual technique.

Both highlights and balayage need the use of lightning products, and if they are not used properly, they will severely damage your hair. Since highlights use foil, overlapping is possible in this method, but as balayage stylists colour the hair using the visual technique, overlapping does not happen.

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What are Highlights
3. What is Balayage
4. Highlights vs Balayage in Tabular Form
5. Summary – Highlights vs Balayage

What are Highlights?

Highlights are a hair colouring method used to lighten a few hair sections. You can use any colour in this process, provided that the colour used is lighter than your natural hair colour. You should remember that the hair lightened with permanent colour or bleach and will be permanent until your hair grows.

There are various types of highlights, giving you timeless, classic highlights with various textures and dimensions. Some of these include babylights, traditional highlights, foil-adage, ombre and lowlights. After doing this, your hair is considered damaged because of the strong exposure to chemicals. This will burn and dry out your hair. This means that the more frequently you get highlights, the more damage your hair undergoes. Because of this reason, hairstylists recommend you get touch-ups every four weeks to four months. Therefore, to protect your hair, you should always use high-quality products. Other than this, remember not to wash your hair as soon as you get highlights. You have to wait at least 48 hours for this. Also, only wash it with cool water since using hot water may help to fade the colour soon and will damage your hair.

Generally, highlights last only for about 2-3 months. However, this depends on your haircare routine, your hair texture, how highlights are done, and how healthy or damaged your hair is.

What is Balayage?

Balayage is free-hand painting hair highlights. This adds a soft, sun-kissed, and natural look to the hair. The meaning of the word ‘Balayage’ is sweeping in French. This refers to the way the colour is applied.

There are various methods to do Balayage. Some stylists separate the hair, while others do not. Some separate it with cotton pieces, while some use foil paper. This method allows the stylist to hand-select the strands of hair that they want to colour.

Balayage needs less maintenance, and therefore this is popular among many women. In addition, this method can be customized according to various hair types like colour, length, and texture so that your facial features can be highlighted or softened.

Before doing a balayage, you should consider several points, like what your favourite part of your hair is, how often you hope to get touch-ups, and how you style your hair daily.

What is the Difference Between Highlights and Balayage?

The key difference between highlights and balayage is that highlights are a foiling technique, while balayage is a visual technique. In highlights, aluminium foil is wrapped around the hair, and the dye is applied more precisely, whereas, in balayage, hair is painted without foil around the hair strands.

The following table shows the difference between highlights and balayage.

Summary – Highlights vs Balayage

Highlights are a hair colouring method used to lighten a few hair sections. This method uses foils and leaves hair in between. Since the hair is coloured from the roots to the end, after doing highlights, you need to touch up your hair frequently with the growth of your hair. Balayage is a free-hand painting of hair highlights. In this method, your hair is coloured from mid to the ends, and therefore, you can go on for several months without any touch-ups. Moreover, you can get a personalized, natural look from this method depending on your skin tone and facial features. Thus, this is the summary of the difference between highlights and balayage.