31 Balayage Highlight Ideas to Copy Now

There were three looks that drove everyone crazy over 2015 and they were balayage, ombre and babylights. For those of you who fell in love with those stunning hair designs, there’s good news ahead. 2016 is going to be a big year once again but this time for the following balayage highlight ideas.

We’ve learned a lot of about the humble highlight over the years and we’ve realized they can do a lot more for us than just add a bit of depth to our hairstyle. From teeny-tiny, barely there stripes to chunky and cool contrasts, there are so many ways to incorporate these balayage highlight ideas into your new ‘do.

1. Silver Blonde & Caramel Balayage Highlights

Jessica Biel is one Hollywood A-lister who’s opted for a balayage barnet and the technique is a relatively new one in the hair scene, requiring hairstylists to hand-paint the highlights on the areas of the hair the sun would hit if you were to be sat in the great outdoors, lapping up those beautiful rays.

The balayage look allows you to keep your hair looking natural even when you’re incorporating a lot of shades and color, giving you plenty of opportunities to get a little experimental.

2. Golden & Caramel Brown Highlights

Going from dark to light is a look that means hair appointments don’t need to be quite as frequent as they were before. Balayage highlight ideas like these are smart because no one would ever know if that dark color at the top was meant to be there, or if your recent blonde dye-job is simply growing out. The best news is… It’s a hot trend!

The darker roots mean that it doesn’t really matter if your roots start to show through and in many cases, it’ll accidentally look like it was meant to be that way. Model Gisele Bundchen recently sported a great balayage blonde look and it’s definitely one that you should copy now!

3. Sun-Kissed Lob

Just because you have short(ish) hair doesn’t mean you don’t get to benefit from balayage. This is barely a shoulder-skimming length yet they’ve still managed to mix in that beautiful gradient of light to dark, just one example of how easy it is for anyone to rock this look.

There are baby blonde highlights running through the hair from just below the roots and these cleverly add depth to the hair to make it appear thicker and fuller. Those textured layers at the end also help to add more oomph, especially when they have been tousled and flicked out to look like this. It’s a great look and one that takes just a few minutes with your hair dryer and a round brush in the morning.

4. Golden Blonde Highlights

Miranda Kerr is another celebrity fan of these balayage highlight ideas and for many of us, it’s the nostalgia it gives us of those summers we played outside for hours on end, not caring about anything at all.

Balayage baby lights are almost like highlights but instead of being super obvious, they’re more subtle and toned down, looking more like sun-kissed rays than several-hour-salon-dye-job!

5. Honey Blonde Highlights for Brunettes

When you’re a brunette and you want to go blonde, it can seem like the bravest choice in the world but as you can see from these honey blonde highlights for brunettes, you don’t need to go all-out blonde in order to have all the fun they supposedly keep having…

Gentlemen may prefer blondes but all the girls will be lusting after this look for the summer. Those beach babe waves just add to the lust-factor!

6. Caramel Brown Highlights On Dark Hair

Let’s say you have naturally dark hair. Let’s also say that you fancy going a bit lighter for the warmer weather we’re expecting to happen real soon… What’s the best look for this? These caramel brown highlights on dark hair of course. What else?

You’ve got the best of both worlds. You can go as light as you dare on the ends. Trimming a few inches off the ends is a great thing from time to time so this balayage-highlighted look is perfect for just before that. Towards the top though, where the new growth is coming through, you treat the hair as little as possible, leaving it unbleached, untreated and not subjected to any dyes.

7. Red Balayage Highlights + Lob

One of the best things about the balayage style is that it can be tweaked to work with any style, shape or color and with there being so many tones and hues on the blonde, brown and even red spectrum to play around with, there are endless looks you can achieve.

You could look completely different every time you come out of the hair salon if you wanted to, just by changing the way the highlights frame your face or the color options you go with. This look could easily be changed the next time you visit the salon by having the balayage painting starting closer to the top of your hair. You could also leave just the ends with that little splash of color.

8. Natural, Dark Brown Root + Silver Blonde Highlights

Such an easy look for a daytime or nighttime event, you don’t need to go nuts with the waves and curls to show off the silver blonde highlights running through this beautiful, natural dark brown rooted look.

If you don’t have time for a full head of styling first thing in the morning, use your blow dryer and a round hairbrush to get those bouncy big waves and if you have a little more time, flick out your hair straighteners quickly and on a lower setting, giving it a quick once-over with hairspray to keep it all in check. Five minute hair indeed!

9. Warm Brown and Golden Blonde Highlights

The aim of the game with balayage is to achieve highlights but highlights that look more natural than they’ve ever done before. A french technique originally, it’s since taken over the world with many A-listers (and D-listers for that matter) rushing off to the hair salon to get their new do’ done.

We love the way the stylist has worked with the length on offer with this beautiful look, combining a lot of layers from quite hair up in the style, and also working in many shades of golden blonde and warm brown for a look that is perfect all year round. You could add a few lighter highlights for the summer and take some away for the winter. Nice and easy!

10. Copper Caramel Highlights

Balayage looks can be as sun-kissed and as natural as you’d like but at the same time, they can also be as bold and daring as you want to go, depending on the colors and shades you put together.

If you’re interested in trying out red for the first time, for example, why not look at something like this beautiful copper caramel look, combining natural tones of strawberry blonde over relatively natural, darker brown roots? There’s just enough red to say you’ve gone red but not too much that you look a little pillar-box Rihanna with those funky red curls. It’s a more flattering way of wearing quite a bold and brave color.

11. Honey Blonde + Natural Root

The thing we love most about these balayage highlight ideas is that the way they are positioned means the natural root grow-out won’t be obvious or ‘ugly’. The worst thing about going lighter than your natural color are those pesky roots but with a look like this, no one would be able to tell what’s root and what’s dye anyway. That’s the beauty of it – making growing out your roots both pretty and flattering!

In order to recreate this look you’ll need to ask your stylist to leave your roots naturally dark (or go a shade or two darker than your natural colour) and blend the balayage highlights down to the ends, giving you a lighter gradient at the bottom. You can use a medium-barrelled curling tong to achieve those bouncy waves and because they’re loose curls, they’ll look just as great slightly fallen out at the end of the day as they did freshly done at the beginning.

12. Caramel & Honey Blonde Highlights

We love chocolate and we couldn’t help but think this hair looked a little bit like the best bar of chocolate we’ve ever seen in our life.

Although we wouldn’t want to eat this look, we’d certainly fancy rocking it and if you want to too, you’ll need to speak to your stylist about caramel and honey blonde highlights, handprinted from about ear level to the ends, playing around with lighter shades as you travel further down.

13. Caramel Highlights

For a super flattering look incorporating these beautiful balayage highlight ideas, go for the lob or long bob as it is otherwise known. It gives you the best of both worlds, length enough to play around with colors and shades whilst still being short enough to be considered low-maintenance.

We all know how much hassle and hard work long hair can be. Give the extensions a rest and wear yours easy, light and loose for a while. Your hair and your scalp will thank you for it!

14. Golden Caramel Highlights

Just because you can go a little nuts with color doesn’t mean you need to and this look is a perfect example of that. It’s still bold, bright and absolutely beautiful to look at, but at the same time, it’s not completely out-there, with brash colors and bossy tones.

It’s a light blending trick that you need to employ here. The look must be subtly added so that it’s not ‘streaks’ and in fact, the majority of the blending work is basically invisible. You can’t see where one color starts and the next begins but somehow, both colors are in there!

15. Honey Beige Highlights

If you fancy going blonder but not too blonde, instead of dying the entire head of hair, use a clever balayage highlight trick instead.

Have that beautiful gradient of color in the bulk of your hair but just around the face, those light and feathery face-framing layers, you should add more of that blended style. Because the layers are framing the face, you’ll get a good idea of what you’ll look like if you were to dye all your hair a much lighter color and it’s also very flattering, bringing highlighting properties.

16. Light, Face Framing Highlights

This is a more exaggerated version of the look we are trying to show you here – how just a few tendrils around the face could make the world of difference to your ‘do.

It’s still subtle but slightly bolder than some we’ve shown you, and you can even play around with this look the other way around too, having darker face framing balayage highlights if you’re usually a light-haired kind of girl.

17. Golden Blonde Highlights on Dark Hair

Of course, when you have the option to go a little crazier than you usually would and still get away with it, why wouldn’t you?

That’s what we love about these golden blonde highlights on dark hair – it’s a rocky, I don’t care, grunge kind of look, one that works perfectly for summer festival time.

18. Soft Caramel and Blonde Highlights

By working together two looks, balayage highlight ideas and ombre gradients, you can achieve a look like this one, toning the hair from an otherwise dull brown shade to one that’s filled with tone and shade.

Even though the hair is still relatively short, there’s plenty to play around with, showing you just how clever and versatile this look really is. There’s a reason it’s going to be the hottest trend of 2016 after all!

19. Gold, Caramel and Mocha Highlights

We all love a good cup of coffee and we also all love these gold, caramel and mocha highlights. The intoxicating twisted blend of varying shades of blonde and bronde (brown-blonde) create a look that will get everyone staring for all the right reasons.

A low maintenance hair design that looks this great, doesn’t take forever to style AND you can leave it a few weeks before hair appointments too? Now those right there are #hairgoals!

20. Copper + Caramel Highlights on Dark Hair

Although these caramel balayage highlight ideas look complicated and hard work, they’re actually easier than many of the other hair designs you’ll have gone for over the years, choosing a more hand-painted method over foils which are fiddly, hard work and take far more time than we’d like to give up.

Using the eyes as a guide, the beautiful caramel and copper highlights that you can see are blended onto the hair in a random and swept style, lightly applying the brighter and paler tones towards the ends. Those bouncy, curly layers really help to jazz things up and more than that, the curls help to show off every aspect of your new color job, something you just don’t get to achieve so easily with straight hair.

21. Dark Red Hair + Golden Highlights

Red and blonde are two colors that not very women are bold or brave enough to throw together but as you can see here, when done the right way, dark red hair with golden highlights can work brilliantly well, as long as you tailor the cut and color to suit you. This is where your hairstylist will come into play.

If you want to go with a color that might not necessarily work with your skin tone, for example a really light blonde that may leave you looking ‘washed out’, you could save that bright tone of color for the ends of the hair, the hair that won’t be framing your face. Leaving darker or more natural colors framing your head will mean the look isn’t too extreme and gives you the opportunity to play around with many more shades.

22. Chocolate Caramel Highlights

There’s nothing better for the summer than a beachy boho look and you can achieve that perfectly by having beachy blonde and caramel balayage highlights to neutral, brown or dirty/dark blonde hair.

Add some beachy waves with salt spray and you have a look favored by the likes of Victoria’s Secrets babe Lily Aldridge.

23. Golden Balayage Highlights

The latest hair trend these days is these cute, bouncy curls and as well as being feminine and pretty to look at, they’re also elegant, classic and sophisticated. It’s a look you can wear day or night, and you can dress up or down easily with the right accessories of a hair-band or a few grips throw into the mix.

When you play around with your hair a lot, it’s always advisable to try and keep use of heated styling tools to a bare minimum but we know you can’t always promise that. If you’re going to use heated tools just make sure you’re protecting your hair, using a heat-protection product to ensure your hair looks luscious and glossy for as long as possible.

24. Caramel Blonde Highlights for Dark Brown Hair

For the women who want to go all the way blonde but don’t want to hardly treat the hair too much in one go, these caramel blonde highlights for dark brown hair are a great mid-way point.

With so many amazing color combinations to experiment with first, why would you want to skip the in-between stages? If you have dark hair and want to go lighter, do it balayage-style, heading to lighter shades over time.

25. Caramel Waves

What about the girlies who love being a brunette and don’t want to go darker? You can still experiment with these balayage highlight ideas but you just need to throw different colors into the mix. As you can see here, there’s not much in the way of blonde but the slightly lighter highlights still help to add depth to the hair.

If this were straight hair, with just one color throw on, it wouldn’t look as thick or as luscious as it does here. These highlights are great for faking ‘oomph’!

26. Bronzey Highlights

You can choose between ash blonde tones and brassy, coppery golden tones but you’ll need to make your choice dependant on your skin type.

If you go for an ash look but you already have a somewhat ashy, pale and white complexion, you might find your new dye-job leaves you looking more washed up on the beach rather than beach babe.

27. Copper and Golden Blonde Highlights

If you’re debating between balayage or ombre, you could always combine the two which in fact, many of these hot balayage highlight ideas actually do.

Ombre is a gradual fading, usually from dark to light, and just like balayage looks, can be done to be both striking and bold or subtle and discreet.

Balayage has the same benefits to offer but offers a much more natural approach to hair coloring and the even better news is that sometimes, with the balayage highlight ideas, you don’t even need to bleach in order to lighten the hair. It all depends on the colors you’re using but balayage is generally the more forgiving design.

28. Mocha + Ice Tone Highlights

If you’re worried about too much of a bright and bolshy tone in your new blonde highlights, it’s definitely worth taking a look at a slightly icier approach. Ice and ash tones of blonde are easier to wear than brighter, yellow tones, especially when you mix them in with the darker browns and mocha colors you have here.

Just because you’re going blonde doesn’t mean you need to go bright blonde. There are plenty of hues to pick from, it’s all about working out which one is right for you.

29. Caramel and Beige Blonde Highlights

If you want a look thats very different from your normal look, but don’t want to step out of the color box you’re used to, balayage is the right idea for you.

The technique itself actually offers more control over where the lighter sections of your hair lie, despite being a hand-painted design, and because of this, the color changes can be more gradual as well as the regrowth process.

30. Light Chocolate Highlights

With regular foil highlight dye-jobs, you would normally expect to be back in the salon every six to eight weeks or so to get everything touched up.

With the balayage highlight look, you don’t need to be as strict with your appointment routine and in many cases, you can get away with leaving it for eight, ten weeks and in some cases, more before you need things re-dyed.

31. Dark Brown Hair + Caramel Highlights

Although this is a look best perfected at the salon to achieve that natural blend of color you want so much, you can try your hands at the dye-job at home with balayage highlight kits bought at local drug stores.

You will want to concentrate on the longer, bottom lengths of the hair, working with the natural layers (or layers cut in by your hairstylist) and it’s probably for the best if you have a friend to hand. This isn’t a look that you’ll easily achieve especially if you’re a first timer to the world of hair dye at home. That’s not to say you can’t give it a shot, but always start with something subtle and discreet just in case…

There are so many ways to wear 2016’s hottest trend but we hope that these beautiful balayage highlight ideas have given you plenty of #hairinspiration! Take these shots into your hairdresser and see if they can’t work out a beautiful new look for you to rock this spring and summer. It’s time for a hair transformation!