Hair Highlighting & Lowlighting Techniques

About Frosting, Chunking & Maintaining Hightlights or Lowlights

Frosting

For men, using a technique called “frosting” has been popular in the past. What this involves is using a bleaching or lightening color treatment to only color the tips of the hair. In most cases, you’ll get a very light blonde or even white color as a result.

Chunking

The chunking-style highlights are wide and very noticeable bands of color. Also, chunking highlights are the least natural-looking highlights you can get. The bigger the highlights are, the less natural they look, but the chunking technique can be downplayed by using low lighting, contrasting colors, and by applying the color in smaller, but still noticeable widths.

Maintaining Highlights or Lowlights

You should wait 24-48 hours before using shampoo to wash your hair after getting highlights or lowlights. If you can wait to shampoo your hair, you’re locking in the vibrant color of the hair for a longer amount of time. You should also limit the use of shampoo to 2 or 3 times a week; for oily hair, you can purchase a dry shampoo to use between shampoos.

Read the labels on your shampoo and conditioning products; if they’re not designed for color-treated hair, avoid using them and purchase some that are for color or chemically treated hair.

Instead of taking a steamy hot shower or bath, use cool water on your hair because hot water will cause highlights and lowlights to fade rapidly. Another tip is to try using a hair clip or shower cap to avoid exposing your hair to hot water. You might even go one step further and use color depositing shampoos, conditioners, and other styling products to help put some color back into hair that has been lost. You can choose to use color depositing products ever other time you shampoo.