SAVE YOUR HIGHLIGHTS (AND $$$) WITH THESE REFRESHING AND PRESERVING TIPS

If you’ve ever gotten highlights in your hair, you know how fleeting that new, shiny, shimmery appearance can wear off. Especially if they’re blond highlights. I’ve recently gotten some buttery warm highlights to do two things: 1.) camouflage the increasing greys and 2.) ring in the summer time with some fresh and youthful brightness.

The Sun Will Damage Your Highlights

While it seems to be counterintuitive, since sunlight exposure tends to lighten and bleach the hair, you’re probably thinking “wouldn’t sun exposure just increase the amount of highlights in my hair?” That’s not exactly what I’m talking about. Mostly, what the sun does is drain the tone of the highlight out by bleaching it. Related: Can Sunlight Damage Your Hair?

This often results in your buttery warm highlights looking either brassy or ashy pretty quickly because it strips out the toning aspect. Most highlights are just created by first stripping the color our of the selected pieces of hair, and then a second step of going over the stripped sections with a secondary color.

So if you want honey colored highlights, or warm coppery butterscotch highlights, the secondary color is what creates those specific tones. It’s these tones that are most susceptible to stripping from sun exposure and other fading elements such as the simple passage of time and repeated washings.

You can read about protecting your hair from sun damage more in the link above. It provides some practical ways to really help keep your hair in top shape, and your highlights too, in the intense summer heat we find ourselves having (this is the most sun I’ve seen in Ohio in a LONG time).

Utilizing a Color Rinse Product

There are plenty of conditioning color rinses on the market now. These are color-saturated products that often will combine conditioning agents into them. They can be applied after shampooing the hair, and usually need to stay on the hair, coating it generously, for a few minutes before being rinsed off.

All these types of products do is help re-deposit some of the tones that are naturally stripped out of your highlights and fade over time. So, if you have caramel colored highlights for example and you’re noticing that tone fading, look for a color rinse or color refreshing product, that matches the overtone you’re looking to restore to your highlights. Related: Color Refreshing Boosters

For example, a nice warm brown color rinse would work to help instill that natural warmth back into stripped ashy highlights. It just needs to be applied about once a week or so in your washing and conditioning regime to have the desired effect. Use your judgement on frequency though. If you're out in the sun a lot for example, you may want to use the rinse more often than once a week.

Go In For a Toning Touchup

If it’s reasonably priced, and usually something like this would be, make an appointment with your stylist and let them know you don’t want them to highlight your hair again, you just want to refresh the overlaying tone. They’ll know what to do, and it may not be half as expensive as the initial highlight session, however it should last quite a while!