There’s a time and a place for all things.

We are huge fans of babylights and foilyage. BUT we have all had times in our life when commitments (babies) leave us a little bit less available to give our highlights the care and attention they need.

Maintaining the tone you like over pre-lightened sections involve regular applications of a toner or semi-permanent colour. Toners or semi-permanent colour are used to deposit tone or colour over highlights.

If your schedule or budget doesn’t allow you to keep up with highlights or balayage, the time has come to fill and cover them.

Pre-lightened sections have had pigments stripped from them. Often they have been toned or coloured with a cool based colour. This means that they are specifically missing warm pigments.

If you apply an all-over significantly darker colour, or a cool toned colour over highlights/balayage, you risk seeing a patchy or green toned colour result.

Successfully colouring over pre-lightened sections requires two steps. You first need to fill the tone of your lighter sections, creating a balanced base. This will then give you a beautiful, consistent final colour result when you apply your final colour.

There are two possible approaches to filling highlights/balayage and adding depth:

1. Go darker in stages. Colouring with a neutral colour which is two levels darker than your current lighter colour will add depth and fill missing pigments. If you want to add more than two levels of depth, then you can do that in stages. Neutral colours will restore the right balance of pigments to your base. If you then want to add cool or warm tones, you can do that with a subsequent colour application. You will see a better final colour result if you have balance the tone and restored missing pigments with a neutral colour initially. This approach is best if you just want to add two levels of depth, over softer highlights.
2. Fill missing warm pigments. If you want to add depth over significantly lighter sections, it is best to first return warm pigments to the hair with a warm based darker semi-permanent colour blended with a 5 vol developer. This will fill and restore warm pigments to lighter sections. This approach is best if you have significantly lighter highlights or balayage.

Both of the above approaches take two steps before you achieve your final colour result. You can colour with your goal colour after you have reintroduced warm pigments first.

Reintroducing a balance of pigments is the key to achieving a beautiful, balanced darker colour result over previously lightened sections of hair.

Talk to our colourists for personalised recommendations on how you can add depth and achieve a gorgeous colour result when you cover your highlights or balayage.

Thanks for the helpful information! Very happy with your colours.

S. Patel