Nobody pays to get stuck with highlights they don’t like. The warmth, natural depth, richness and upgrade of your look without a full colour change is what every person guns for.
The secret to achieving subtle brown highlights that blend perfectly with your hair colour lies in this blog post!
Real Reasons Brown Coloured Highlights Go Wrong (And Why Yours Don’t Have to)
There’s something about brown coloured highlights, and why most people lean towards it. The colour is a quiet luxury that exudes sophistication, complements and pops different skin tones, enhances your face features and is easy to maintain without breaking the bank or your time.
1. Choosing the Wrong Shade of Brown
Brown isn’t a single hue. There’s a palette with different shades to provide you with a variety of options to match your undertone. Each shade of brown, whether ash brown, caramel, chestnut or chocolate brown, blends differently with the base of your hair. Cool shades like ash brown on warm hair makes your hair look muddy, warmer shades on cool-toned hair makes it look orange.
Why yours won’t go wrong: Before applying colour to your hair, check for the shade that goes flawlessly with skin and hair base. Request a strand test in a salon or do one yourself.
Looking for the best brown colours to make your highlights? Make a choice from GK Hair Brown Juvexin Cream Colour.
2. Wrong Placement of Highlights
Choosing the right brunette shade is the bottle opener in making sure your highlights come out just right. Placing the highlights in the right areas on your hair is the cherry on top. It brightens your complexion, pronounces your facial features more, and adds depth and brightness to your hair’s base colour. Heavy, too little or uneven application of hair colour creates harsh lines, imbalance, and poorly blended hair.
Why yours won’t go wrong: A professional colourist will blend the colour strategically on your hair using a good technique that will help achieve a balanced, flowing, sun-kissed effect.
Do you want brown hair with blonde highlights? Read more on: Brown Hair With Blonde Highlights: Ultimate Guide
3. Using the Wrong Developer or Formula
Every intended result has a formula to achieve it, and getting highlights follows this rule too. Using the wrong developer or the wrong ratio of developer and hair colour lifts your hair too quickly or slowly, and leaves your highlights looking too brassy or too harsh.
Why yours won’t go wrong: You’d use a quality developer like GK Hair Cream Developer, so you won’t overbleach your hair.
4. UAE Weather + Hard Water (The Regional Problem No One Talks About)
Everyone agrees the weather in UAE is amazing, but what isn’t said enough is that each time you step outside the sun to admire the culture, people and landscape, you exchange your smiles for your hair colour. The sun and heat take away the warmth, and replaces it with dullness and dryness.
If you’re in the UAE, you probably bathe with hard water, unless you use a shower filter. Each time you bathe, it deposits minerals which can build up over time and react with your hair, making colours look brassy when applied.
Why yours won’t go wrong: Fix a filter in your bathroom, always apply UV sprays before going out in the sun, and deep condition weekly using GK Deep Hair Conditioner Treatment.
5. Not Using a Toner
A toner adds gloss and shine to your highlights. Not using a good toner that goes with your undertone lets underlying pigments from lightening your hair affect the outcome, flow and beauty of your highlights.
Why yours won’t go wrong: Always remember to go for retoning every 6 - 10 weeks.
Step-by-Step: How You Can Get Subtle Brown Highlights That Blends With Your Hair
Unless you are experienced and confident in doing highlights yourself, you should see an experienced colourist to make sure you walk out with the perfect, eye-grasping highlights.
Brown can be used to add lighter strands such as caramel highlights on brown hair (called highlights); or darker strands, such as chocolate-brown highlights on light brown hair (lowlights), depending on your base colour.
Here’s a step-by-step process to get subtle highlights that blend with your hair.
Step 1: Bring a photo of what you want to your stylist.
Step 2: Consultation. Your stylist looks at what you want and thoroughly assesses your hair. The stylist:
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Checks your hair texture, condition and current hair colour.
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Asks about your hair history (previous dye, keratin treatments, bleaching, etc).
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Identifies your skin tone and undertone, and advises you on what shade of brown will work.
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Discusses your maintenance goals with you.
Step 3: Colour formula customisation. Your stylist mixes the colour to suit your undertone and your targeted shade.
Step 4: Choosing the right lift (1-2 levels lighter or darker). For subtle results, highlights are 1-2 levels lighter than hair base, and 1-2 levels darker for lowlights. For dark coloured hair, your stylist lifts your hair using a developer and lightening cream (2 parts developer to 1 part lightener). The developer opens the hair cuticles, and the lightener penetrates to break your hair pigments. For light-based hair, your stylist mixes the brown dye and a low volume developer.
Step 5: Application of the hair dye. Your stylist sections your hair into quadrants. Using the technique needed, could be balayage, babylights, moneypiece, ombre, or whichever is best suited for your style then your stylist applies the hair dye.
Step 6: Your stylist will check your hair every 5 minutes for 30 minutes and then will rinse off the colour with cool or lukewarm water. A post colour toner or gloss is added to fine-tune the shade.
Step 7: Conditioning and styling. Your stylist applies a colour-safe mask like GK Hair Lock Me Colour Masque, and rinses out after 20-30 minutes to lock in colour. Your hair is very ready to be styled.
Maintaining Your Highlights in UAE Conditions: The Do’s and Don’ts
To maintain your highlights so they keep looking soft, glossy and natural, here are things you should avoid, and things to do:
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Don’t wash for the first 48–72 hours after colouring to prevent early fading and to preserve the pigment.
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Wash with sulphate-free, colour-safe products. Check the GK Smoothening Shield Deal selling at 23% discount, for products to use.
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Use GK Silver Bombshell Shampoo once a week if brassiness appears.
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Limit heat styling. If you must, use a heat protectant spray or stick to medium heat.
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Use UV sprays, scarves and hats to protect your hair from the sun.
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Use a shower filter, so your highlights are not exposed to chlorine and hard water.
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Deep condition weekly. Moisture keeps your highlights shiny and smooth.
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Apply Gloss or toner every 6–10 weeks. It keeps the brown shade blended, rich, and shiny.
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Visit the salon for a full highlight touch-up every 8–12 weeks, though balayage and babylights may last for up to 3–6 months.
What We’ve Said
Adding highlights is art; very similar to a painter adding colours on a canvas to illustrate light or shadow. It’s careful, subtle and takes effort to make it a masterpiece for people to gaze upon.
Brown is beautiful and perfect for the UAE. Whether it’s brown coloured highlights for other hair colours or hair highlights for brown hair, with the right products for colouring and maintenance, you’re sure to walk head high, eyes glaring, through the corridors of the Dubai mall!
