Balayage is a hair coloring technique that uses hand-painted highlights to create a sunkissed, natural look. It has become popular with celebrities and royals. Balayage is a custom process done freehand without foil that results in multidimensional color with no harsh lines. It requires a skilled stylist but offers benefits like a slower grow-out and lower maintenance over time compared to other highlighting methods.

1. BALAYAGE: A CUT ABOVE THE REST
Are you tearing your hair out over where to go next with your look?
Scratching your head about how to heighten your hair’s highlights?
Think a symmetrical bob’s dated rather than retro?
Not prepared to wait for feathercuts to make their comeback (43 years and
counting)?
Want something new and original that appears both professionally- and self-
styled? Want it to suit your hair colour exactly?
Want it to cover grey because you’ve gone over to the not-as-dark-as-you-
once-were side?
Look no further - and look wonderful - with balayage!
Balayage – a graded colouring technique pioneered in the 1970s - is now
globally huge, but not in a 1980s top heavy bottom-of-the-style-barrel way: it’s
low profile, high style and, most importantly, can be customised for YOU.
For the uninitiated, balayage (pronounced Bal-I-ahj) is the latest line in
hairstyling that’s trending with celebs from all (cat)walks of life, including
supermodel Cara Delevigne, Julia Roberts, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jessica
Alba–the list is almost endless (like the balayage variations each has chosen,
which range from subtle to sub-punk). Jared Leto (from Fight Club and Thirty
Seconds to Mars) evens struts a balayage cut for the guys, so it’s not just a
girl thing (although his matching hipster beard is strictly men only….).
The word ‘balayage’ derives from the French verb ‘to sweep’, as it originated
in France. However, if you have visions of gigantic powdered pompadours
and periwigs like those favoured by Marie Antoinette and many French
noblemen who – like her – lost their hair at exactly the same time as they lost
their heads, check out Google Images. You’ll see hundreds of stars and
socialites - including modern day royal Kate Middleton - flaunting their flowing
glowing locks.

2. [INSERT PIX OF MARIE ANTOINETTE ETC plus
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=which+stars+have+balayage+hair?
&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=653&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0a
hUKEwikl-DmiZjKAhWKIZAKHe27AFIQsAQIGw#imgrc=_]
The Balayage Entourage is living –and very public - proof that balayage is a
growing phenomenon and its effortlessly natural appearance encourages the
belief that almost anyone on the high street can emerge from a regular
hairdresser or barber with hair that is only actually seen on the boulevards of
Hollywood. Living this dream depends entirely on the skill employed in
balayage, so if you’re considering it, you need to consult – and trust – your
stylist.
• Balayage is suitable for short hair, but usually works better with longer
cuts.
• Balayage is delicate, customised, intuitive and uses no foil. It is also
known as ‘hair painting’, involving freehand application of colour -
which your stylist will agree with you - by paddle or tint brush at the
centre of the hair (sunlight hits with the highest intensity here), from
where it is spread to cover root and tip.
• Balayage will obliterate any of the 50 shades of grey - so it’s not just for
the kids.
• Balayage will create a sleek multitonal sheen that both reflects and
retains light (potentially using complementary techniques if you have
dark hair) and infuse your hair with a sunkissed summer glow that
would put Sun In (popular 1990s home highlighter) into the shade.

3. • After balayage treatment you shouldn’t wash your hair for 72 hours (to
allow root follicles to close) - but, as we all know, styling is lost the
very second you walk out of the salon, so where’s the problem?!.
• Balayage is low maintenance, so it cuts out much of the aftercare
you’re convinced you can do yourself – until you get home.
• Balayage tends to be more expensive than standard highlighting (costs
are upwards of £90, adjusted regionally) - but it won’t give you grid-
locks, harsh, two-dimensional toning or unwanted after-effects like
tidemark growout.
• However, balayage should make YOU feel a million dollars - and this
sensation will last longer than usual, as the grow-out groan zone
(“ohhh nooo, I need my roots done already ….”) is less noticeable with
balayage than with other colouring methods, so your slow-fade hair will
need redoing every eight weeks or so, rather than the usual six.
Balayage is set to stay, but you won’t see salons formerly called Cut Off Point,
Strand & Deliver, and From Hair to Eternity changing their names to Balayage
Garage, as this conjures up mental pictures of grease, irreparable damage
and complicated maintenance procedures - everything balayage most
definitely isn’t.
Balayage is the pinnacle of refinement, poise and cool and will set you apart
from your peers - until they all realise that hair painting is the way forward
(which might mean the feathercut will yet be rescued from obscurity by
fashionistas desperately trawling retroland for the most unconventional look to
resurrect……).
So if you want to be up there with Gwen Stefani – and ‘up there’ to be like the
Duchess of Cambridge’s brunette barnet or like the crowning glory of any one
of TV’s uncrowned royal family the Kardashians, balayage is for you.

4. Balayage might even be right for your man, and could be the perfect present
he’d not expect from Santa Claus (whose own luxuriant white mane is
begging for balayage!).
Fling out the foil and dump the dye! Go on a balayage voyage in search of
waves of unimaginably vivid colour and deep oceans of gloss that even long-
time balayage believer Jennifer Aniston would be proud to showcase in a
photoshoot.
Balayage is the hairstyling (French) revolution for the 21st
century that is now
sweeping the world and captivating many of the glittering elite at the top of it.
Fortunately, balayage is also accessible to us lesser mortals and has the
potential to make us all feel like movie stars - although getting an appointment
at exclusive Beverly Hills salon Jose Eber or Trevor Sorbie’s Hampstead
studio might be as ambitious as a Euromillions win.
And you’d probably need a good chunk of your jackpot to pay for balayage at
either place.