Your hair may have been highlighted using a technique that stylists call “foil highlighting.” The foil highlighting technique has become popular in the last ten years. In fact, most stylists don’t know how to highlight hair in any other way.

There is also a perception that foil highlighting is done only in expensive salons, that any other method will not give you a great look and is unprofessional.

In the hairdressing business we are always looking for new ways to style hair, either using different techniques to highlight the hair or to cut or style it. Sometimes the new methods are really innovative, like using a round brush and handheld hair dryer instead of rollers to style your hair, and sometimes it can be tricky, like using electric clippers instead of scissors. normal haircuts for women. As you may have noticed, it did not catch on.

What is the reason to use aluminum foil? Aluminum foil is very flexible and malleable and therefore lends itself well to covering “painted” hair so that it does not come into contact with hair that is not lighting up. It is a way to separate highlighted hair from the rest of the hair.

Making your highlights with foil can take a long time, although some stylists can do it faster than others. Aluminum foil hair highlighting can also be very expensive, especially if your stylist recommends that you get your roots done every couple of months, which is not really necessary. But some women want to redo their roots as soon as they see dark hair showing.

When you add “highlights” to your hair, you need a contrast, otherwise the highlights are not visible and the entire hair color becomes monochromatic, defeating the purpose.

There are also some stylists who prefer the “cap highlighting” method rather than the “foil highlighting” method. I am one of them. My preference comes from experience. Having used both methods, I have come to the conclusion that the results are better if a striped hat is used.

Why can you ask? One important reason is that by using this method I can space out the strands of hair to highlight them more flexibly.

Another important reason is this: when I use bleach for the hair to achieve a certain color of highlights, (and we use bleach often for certain colored highlights because only by using bleach can we achieve this type of highlights) I can apply the bleaching almost to the same time in the whole cap. What this means is that the discoloration stays on the hair for less time than when it is done with foil, which is much better for your hair.

When you consider that bleach immediately lightens hair the moment it comes into contact with it, applying bleach at practically the same time allows me to have full control over the color result I want to achieve compared to foil where the bleach is already processing the hair (making it lighter) for at least twenty minutes when the stylist rubs the back of the head.

Using a striped cap, you can also use different designs to get different highlights.

Some stylists may point out that when using the cap method, the highlights are not close enough to the scalp compared to the foil technique. But you can get the highlights out of the cap if you do it the right way. When you use the crochet hook, you can achieve this by holding it at a certain angle. In fact, I describe the technique in my e-book “The Right Hair Color For You” The New Hair Coloring System For Coloring Hair At Home.

There are some disadvantages to using the stop method. It can hurt when the hair is pulled through the small openings in the hat with the crochet hook. Therefore, it must be done very carefully. The other disadvantage is that it is not suitable for long hair. In this case it is necessary to use aluminum foil.

However, the most important reason not to use aluminum foil is that it is not biodegradable. The irony is that while some hair salons sell “green” shampoo and other “green” products, they continue to use mountains of aluminum foil every day.

Copyright © Doris Möller – All rights reserved

By Doris Moller