Hair Highlight Ideas: Find the Best Types of Highlights for Your Look

Last Updated December 17, 2025

Highlighting is a popular coloring technique that involves lightening strategic strands to create light, dimension, and contrast. Hair highlights are also the perfect solution if you’re looking to lift or transform your current color without committing to a new all-over shade. No matter what your base hair color is or whether your type is straight, curly or coily, check out our hair highlight ideas, and learn how to easily highlight your hair at home.

Types of Highlights: Ideas to Inspire Your Next Look

When it comes to choosing the best hair highlights for you, it can be a little confusing with so many options out there. Below are the different types of highlights you’ll want to be familiar with as you decide what look you want to achieve. We also included pro tips on the best low-maintenance routines, hair highlighting tips for beginners, and hair highlights ideas for creating natural, subtle contrast.

Natural & Subtle Highlights

Balayage

Balayage is a popular technique that involves freehand brushing blond highlights directly onto your hair to create a blended natural sun-kissed look. This incredibly low-maintenance style keeps looking good as your hair grows out. Balayage is also easy to do yourself with an at-home balayage kit, making it the perfect option for the first time you balayage.

Sombré

Ideal for subtle enhancement, the sombré method is a fusion of hair highlighting techniques with results that sound like the name: “subtle or soft ombré.” If ombré highlights seem too drastic, opt for softer and more natural sombré hair highlights.

Babylights

Babylights, you ask? This technique involves highlighting much thinner sections of hair in foil. Babylights are one of the best natural-looking hair highlighting techniques to try if you want to go slightly lighter while keeping your original color. Creating a subtle brightening effect, babylights are particularly recommended for blondes and those with fine hair.

Face-framing Highlights

Of all the different types of highlights, face-framing highlights are a great place to start if you want to dip your toe into the hair highlights trend. Unlike money piece highlights, face-framing highlights offer a more blended option by framing the face with a subtly lighter color than your base color. To get an idea, imagine how your hair looks when naturally bleached by the sun — but even better!

Lowlights

Lowlights give lighter locks noticeable depth and body by applying a darker shade to specific sections. This hair technique is especially effective at correcting overly highlighted or brassy hair to create a more natural effect.

Teasylights

Looking for a natural, low-maintenance look? Then teasylights are for you. Sections of hair nearest to the scalp are teased (or back-combed), and only the non-teased sections are lightened. This technique helps make the transition from dark to light strands less noticeable, creating a more natural look. Think beachy sun-kissed locks.

Summery Ribbon Highlights

Ribbons of blonde hair mingling among a darker base color give this style more of a romantic vibe than chunky highlights. Ribbon highlights are ideal for curly or wavy hair as they showcase its natural texture.

Bold & Expressive Highlights

Foilayage

Foilayage takes balayage to a whole new level. Tresses are brushed with blond highlights and then wrapped in foil to make them even lighter and brighter. While the process is a little more involved, the results are truly striking, especially for brunettes looking for a pop of brightness.

Flamboyage

Flamboyage is a hair highlighting method that combines foilayage and balayage to create intense multi-dimensional hues, depth and vibrancy. Transparent adhesive strips are used to isolate specific strands of hair prior to applying the color to the selected strands. Flamboyage works well on all hair types and textures, resulting in natural-looking sun-kissed locks.

Ombré

Ombré hair highlights blend horizontal gradients of color from the ends upwards. While it can be used for shorter styles, you’ll see the best effect on longer hair. This technique also works on any hair color, so you can mix and match shades to your heart’s content. It’s also a great low-maintenance option because as your hair grows out, the lighter sections move further down the tips.

Money Piece Highlights

Bolder than babylights and even balayage, the eye-catching money-piece look is created when the two-inch sections of hair that frames your face are highlighted. Strawberry and cream, coffee and cinnamon, black and red – it’s all about the contrast. This technique works particularly well on bobs, lobs, and long-/mid-length styles with face-framing layers.

Peek-a-boo Highlights

Unlike other types of hair highlights, these bold color combos are concealed in the underlayers. Day at the office? Style your hair down and no one will be the wiser! But when you’re painting the town red, pin up your hair and flaunt your cutting-edge look!

Chunky Highlights

With a nod to the 90s and Y2K, this fun, edgy style is seriously on trend. Thick, distinct streaks of contrasting colors create head-turning results. Pair with bold styles to stand out from the crowd.

Dimensional Highlights

Unlike single-color highlights, dimensional highlights add depth, dimension, and movement by using lighter and darker shades to create the illusion of more volume by mimicking natural hair variations. For example, dark hair can be made to look fuller with a range of complementary lighter highlights, and vice versa. While all highlights add depth, dimensional highlights do it best.

Best Highlights for Brown Hair

Toasted Brown Highlights

Toasted brown highlights are a fresh take on caramel highlights. As the name implies, this warm look accentuates brunette shades.

Cool-Tone Dark Brown with High Contrast Highlights

Pair a black base with golden blonde highlights for dramatic multidimensional contrast that is still somehow subtle.

Chestnut Brown Hair with Highlights

Who said blondes have more fun? If you love a chestnut brown base color, you can still ride the highlight trend by adding subtle highlights in a complementary shade.

Deep Coffee Brown with Barely-There Highlights

Brunettes love the deep rich brown a coffee color base gives, and it’s a firm favorite when the seasons change to cooler temps. Go a shade or two lighter for subtle highlights, or opt for a deeper lift for a café au lait look.

Richly Warming Hair Highlights

Rich, warm hues of buttery caramel and coppery auburn, threaded through a darker base color to create a subtle interplay of light and shade. What’s not to love!

Hair Highlights to Brighten Your Complexion

When it comes to choosing a shade that flatters olive skin rather than washing it out, go for red, coppery or golden highlights to brighten this type of complexion.

Best Highlights for Blonde Hair

Golden Sun-Kissed Highlights

Nothing says California more than golden highlights. No matter what hair highlights you choose, golden blondes make us think of the beach, sunshine, and summer.

Subtle Platinum Highlights for Thin Hair

Muted shades of beige and bright platinum add dimension to thinner hair to give it more depth and a feeling of fullness.

Golden Flamboyage

Achieve gold luminosity by combining the flamboyage hair highlights technique with rich hues inspired by this precious metal.

Cool Versus Warm Hair Highlights

Warm highlights like champagne and caramel pair well with warm undertones, while cool highlights (e.g., ash and platinum) work best with cooler undertones. The best choice depends on your skin tone: warm skin tones generally suit warm highlights, and vice versa.

Best Highlights for Bronde Hair

Ashy Bronde with Face-Framing Highlights

The base isn’t brown, and it’s not blonde either. It’s bronde! This incredibly versatile base color pairs beautifully with both warm and cool face-framing highlights.

Bronde Shag with Highlights

The shag is a fabulous full-bodied cut. Take a bronde base and add mushroom, bronze or sandy blonde hair highlights for dimension galore.

Best Highlights for Red Hair

Flaming Red Hair Highlights

These flaming red hair highlights can be applied using the teasylights technique for diffuse color. Teasylights are one of the hottest new trends for highlighted hair, and we think this look is red hot!

Blonde Highlights with Red Undertones

If your base color is already gingery, blonde highlights can achieve a beautiful strawberry-blonde look that’s perfect for summer. If your red locks need a refresh, highlights might be the solution. By adding lighter shades, the hair’s shape and movement is enhanced, giving the illusion of more volume and texture especially when paired with ribboning or peek-a-boo hair highlights. Go bold with blond or black highlights, or choose strawberry blonde, copper, and rose gold highlights to create a softer contrast.

Best At-Home Highlighting Kits

When it comes to coloring techniques and at-home hair highlights, Garnier has everything you need to customize your looks from face-framing highlights to a stunning ombré effect. Take the Garnier Virtual Shade Selector quiz to help find your perfect color!

Consider Your Base Color

Now that you’ve swoon-scrolled over honey, caramel, and champagne color highlights, let’s get down to the base. Have you considered that when it comes to a genuinely stunning head of highlighted hair, your base color should be as flattering as your highlights? In fact, the importance of the undertone or base color is key when it comes to choosing between warm and cool highlights. The colors should enhance one another, as well as complement your skin tone and cut.

Sound complicated? Choose the perfect base color with our Hair Color Virtual Try-On Tool. Simply upload a selfie or virtually try on any shade of hair color. That way, you’ll be certain of what base color will go best with whatever types of hair highlights you choose.

Hair Highlights Ideas for Different Hair Lengths

Whether you’ve got short, medium, or long hair, read on for hair highlights ideas that will enhance and flatter your style.

Short Hair Highlights

Opt for face-framing or bold chunky highlights to showcase your pixie, crop, bob or lob.

Medium Hair Highlights

Types of hair highlights like balayage and ribbon highlights are perfect for creating blended highlights that stay looking good all summer long.

Long Hair Highlights

If you have long locks, ombré, dimensional or ribbon hair highlights make a real impact by creating soft cascading contrast.

Hair Highlights Ideas FAQ

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