How to Do Your Own Highlights

Co-authored by Michael Van den Abbeel

Last Updated: March 18, 2024

To get fantastic highlights without spending time and money at a salon, you can easily do your own highlights at home. You’ll need to buy your supplies from a beauty store, prepare your hair and a workstation, and apply your highlights using a few easy techniques. After you've highlighted your hair, you'll want to follow some steps for maintaining them to keep your hair looking its best.

Part 1

Part 1 of 3:

Preparing Your Hair

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1
Choose a highlighter kit with a cap if you have short hair. Shop at a beauty supply store for your highlighter kit; some kits come with a cap with holes, hook, and brush, which are nice if you have shorter hair and would like evenly spread highlights.
- If you only want a few highlights in very specific places, you won’t need a kit with a cap. Regular highlighting or bleach kits will work fine.
2
Buy a highlighting or bleach kit and applicator brush if you have longer hair. For medium to longer hair, choose a kit that comes with the bleach you need and a brush or other applicator that allows you to place your highlights exactly where you want them.^{[1]
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- If you choose a kit that doesn’t contain an applicator or brush, or are using separate bleach powder and developer, just buy a dye brush at the same beauty supply store where you bought your kit. When buying your bleach powder and developer separately, make sure that you choose either a 10 or 20 volume developer, which are safest for use at home.
- For small, subtly blended highlights that don’t look extremely obvious, ask an employee to help you find a spool brush, the kind typically used for applying mascara or eyebrow gel.
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3
Select a highlighting kit that will complement your hair color. If you want your highlights to look natural, choose a blonde highlighting kit that will give you highlights a few shades lighter than your natural color. Auburn highlights are also a great choice, especially if you have dark brown or black hair.
- For more dramatically colored highlights like pink, purple, or any other color, you’ll need to get your highlights pretty light with bleach before applying the color. There are kits made specifically for those colors, or you can buy a light blonde highlight kit and then the colored dye separately.
4
Don’t wash your hair 2-3 days before highlighting it. Using bleach and dye on clean hair can damage it, so the natural oils your scalp provide protection for the hair shaft. Your hair should also be dry when you begin highlighting it.^{[2]
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- You should avoid highlighting hair that has been chemically relaxed or permed. If your hair has been chemically treated in the past with dyes, you may want to consult a professional before doing your own highlights.
5
Set up your highlighting station. Get out your supplies such as your cap and hook, foil, brush, bleach, and developer at your bathroom sink. Put away items nearby that might get damaged by the bleach. Put on an old T-shirt and have old towels handy to protect yourself from the bleach.
- It's a good idea to purchase a hairdresser's cape to protect your skin and clothes from the bleach. You can find one at your local beauty supply store or online.
- If you’re highlighting long hair, you’ll also need strips of aluminum foil to separate your highlighted strands from the rest of your hair.
6
Mix your powder and developer. If your kit calls for you to mix bleach powder and developer together, mix it together according to the instructions while wearing rubber or latex gloves. Try not to get any of the mixtures onto your skin.^{[3]
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- If you do get highlighting solution onto your skin, wipe it off immediately with a damp cloth.
7
Do a strand test. Choose a small strand of hair underneath your top layer of hair that will not be easily seen. Clip the rest of your hair away from the strand and brush bleach onto the strand, then rinse it off after 20 minutes.^{[4]
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- If your hair starts to break or become damaged, rinse the bleach off right away and do not apply this highlighting solution to any other parts of your hair.

Part 2

Part 2 of 3:

Applying Your Highlights

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1
Pull strands of hair through the holes of your cap if you’re using one. If you’re using a cap, brush your hair first and then put it on. Take a look at where the holes are; this is where your highlights will go. Use the hook that came with your kit to pull small sections of hair through the holes in the cap.^{[5]
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- You don't have to use every hole provided; just pull through as much hair as you want.
2
Use the long end of a comb to separate sections of longer hair. If you’re not using a cap, first style your hair how you normally wear it. Determine which sections of hair you want to highlight; most people choose to highlight areas in the front and strands on the top layer of their hair since that is where sunlight would naturally lighten hair the most. Separate these sections using the end of a rat-tail comb and use small clips to section off these strands.^{[6]
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- Make sure that you don't use tools or clips that are made of metal, as the metal could react with the bleach.
- If you want your highlights to appear in a ponytail, consider doing some underneath strands in addition to the top layer strands that you do.
3
Brush bleach onto your designated sections. Use your applicator brush to apply bleach to the strands you have either pulled through the cap holes or clipped aside. Apply it from the middle of your strands to the ends first, since the ends of hair would naturally be lighter than the tops.
- Use your regular dye painting brush for thicker highlights. To create thinner highlights, use your small spool brush only. Alternatively, you can get thinner highlights by dividing your hair into smaller sections, which would allow you to still use your regular dye brush.
- Make sure each strand gets an even coating of bleach for the best results.
4
Use strips of aluminum foil to keep longer strands of hair separate. For long hair, place a strip of foil under the part of your hair you are highlighting while you paint bleach onto the strand of hair. Fold up the aluminum foil to keep that strand separate from your non-highlighted hair while the bleach works on your hair.^{[7]
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- Place the aluminum foil around each section of hair with highlighter on it as you go.
5
Check your color every 5 minutes, leaving it in for 20 minutes at most. Most kits will call for 20 minutes as the maximum time to leave the bleach on your hair. You can check your hair every 5 minutes and rinse it sooner if you feel that it is as light as you want it.
- Be sure to follow the instructions on your kit for the time limits of leaving solution in your hair. Leaving it in too long can cause your hair to become damaged and break.
6
Rinse your hair with cool water. Remove the aluminum foil strips, if you used them. Then, rinse your head under cool running water until all the bleach is rinsed out. If you used the cap with holes, you can rinse the strands with cool running water first and then remove the cap.
7
Apply colored dye over the dry highlighted strands, if desired. If you want green, purple, pink, or another color highlights instead of blonde, dry your hair completely first. Then, section out the highlighted strands and paint the colored dye over each. Wrap the colored strands in aluminum foil to prevent the color from transferring to the rest of your hair.
- Leave the dye on for as long as the package suggests, or until you are pleased with the color. Then, rinse out the dye one strand at a time with cool water.

Part 3

Part 3 of 3:

Maintaining Your Highlights

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1
Shampoo and condition your hair using products for color-treated hair.^{[8]
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Expert Source

Michael Van den Abbeel
Professional Hair Stylist

Expert Interview. 7 January 2019.} Shampoo and conditioner made for color-treated hair helps prevent your hair from drying out. If your highlighting kit came with a conditioner or rinsing cream, use that instead of your own conditioner.^{[9]
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- Be sure that all the bleach is rinsed from your hair before you shampoo and condition, so that leftover bleach doesn’t get into the rest of your hair and lighten it.
2
Buy a touch-up kit to maintain highlights that grow out. When your highlights start to grow out, use a touch-up kit of the same color to brighten your roots. Touch-up kits often come with rubber fingertip applicators that make it easy to apply a little highlighter solution directly to your roots. Follow the instructions, and apply the touch-up solution only to your roots and sections where you’d like to add highlights.^{[10]
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- You can also simply allow your highlights to grow out if you don’t want to continue touching them up. Or, if you’d like to cover them up, consult a professional about color treating your highlighted hair.
3
Use sulfate-free hair products.^{[11]
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Expert Source

Michael Van den Abbeel
Professional Hair Stylist

Expert Interview. 7 January 2019.} Now that you have color-treated hair, you want to be sure to avoid sulfates, which are known to dry out and damage hair, particularly if it is color treated. Check the labels on your shampoo, conditioner, hairspray, gel, or styling creams to make sure they do not contain sulfates.^{[12]
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- If you have any products containing sulfates, replace them with ones that do not until your highlights grow out.

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What should I do first, overall hair color or highlights?

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This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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You can do both at the same time. However, if you want to do them separately, then you need to apply your base color first. Otherwise, you would have to carefully work around your highlights to avoid covering them with the new color.

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Is it cheaper to dye or highlight your hair?

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If you’re getting it done in a salon, all over color is usually cheaper, since it’s a less complicated process. Highlighting may also be slightly more expensive at home, since you need both bleach and hair dye (as well as other equipment, like foil and a cap) in order to do it.

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How do you get your natural hair color back after highlights?

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If you don’t want to let it grow out naturally, you will need to dye your highlighted hair back to a shade similar to your natural color. Apply a gloss over the highlighted areas to help give the treated hair a healthy shine, then dye it with a permanent color that’s as close as possible to your natural hair color.

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Tips

Try a natural highlighting technique if you’d like to avoid using bleach. You can use lemon juice or chamomile tea instead of bleach. Follow the same procedure for applying the lemon juice or tea as you would for applying bleach, then sit out in the sun while your hair processes to get natural highlights.

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If the highlight has become too dark, you can lighten it to get the desired color.

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