Defining Hair Color: BALAYAGE

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If you pay even the teensiest morsel of attention to the fashion world, the obnoxious to spell and ever more challenging to pronounce, BALAYAGE is probably on your radar. If it’s not, it should be. Balayage, pronounced, Bah-lay-ahj, comes from the French word meaning “sweeping.” The coloring technique is thus named due to the nature of painting or sweeping the color onto the hair. Like most things in the fashion world, balayage has been around for a while (since the 70s), but has made a fierce comeback in the past couple of years due to it’s many enticingly fabulous qualities. The painted, free-hand technique of balayage is super cool for many reasons; first, it’s entirely customizable. Just like the ombre, we’re a huge fan of anything that can be catered to the individual. The tone of the highlights, the amount of painted pieces, and how bold or subtle they are can all be designed for your style and preference. No matter your hair color, balayage can be molded to suit you! The artistic technique of balayage also allows for a really natural looking highlight. Remember when you were a kid and your hair used to get those gorgeous natural highlights in the summer? Balayage can mimic that sun-kissed glow.

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Also like the ombre, balayage has more of a “grown-out” look than traditional foiled highlights. This means it’s a low-maintenance style that can be worn for much longer. In the fast-paced, always busy world of today, getting into the salon every few weeks can be a challenge. Those every-four-weeks root retouches can go out the window with balayage!

Take note though, balayage is not ombre. Despite the fact that they have many commonalities, the ombre and balayage styles are quite different. The ombre is a full color gradation going from one solid color gradually to another. Balayage is a type of highlight, where strands are chosen and painted. Due to their widespread popularity, stylists have experimented with a combination of the two so you MAY see the terms put together -- a balayage ombre. This would be lower balayage pieces that have a gradation of their own. The effect of lighter ends and darker roots, but not from one full solid color to another full solid color. The highly customizable nature of both color techniques, along with the artistic emphasis allows stylists to really experiment and create variable looks.

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 This brings us to our final favorite balayage feature. Hair stylists are essentially artists, especially here at Alter EGO. They love to create customized looks for their clients, and are inspired by each person’s uniquities. Because balayage can be done so many different ways it gives the stylist some flexibility to really be creative and design a look that is just perfect for YOU. It’s the perfect season for beachy sun-kissed highlights, and it’s always the perfect time for a new custom look. Now that you know how to pronounce the darn word, and what exactly it is, come in and see one of our balayage experts to enhance your summer style!

For more information about balayage, check out these two fabulous articles:

http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/545771/so-what-exactly-is-balayage-why-do-we-love-it.html

http://www.vogue.com.au/beauty/hair+insider/what+is+the+balayage+effectr,13857

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Defining Hair Color: OMBRE

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The hair world loves to come up with all sorts of names for different styles of color: highlights, lowlights, balayage, ombre, sombre, babylights, ecaille… the list goes on, and that doesn’t even touch on the different shades of color: warm, cool, golden, reds, etc. But what exactly do all of these labels mean?! Understanding what defines each color type can help you better communicate to your stylist what you are looking for. We wanted to explore the differences between these color types through a series of posts explaining a little bit about each one and then differentiating it from the others. Let’s start off with the OMBRE. An ombre is literally a graduation from light to dark. This word has become all-important in everything fashion from hair to nails to clothing fabric: ombre is everywhere. Some people would have you believe that the ombre is fading away, but it’s definitely still relevant, and there’s a few reasons why we still LOVE this trend.

First, you can completely customize it to suit your hair and style. Ombre can be vibrant and bold, or a subtle fade (aka sombre); it can be done on long hair, short hair, or in between, and each way gives a totally different vibe and style. The ombre is so versatile that people have taken it in all kinds of creative directions… there are red ombres, extremely dark to extremely light ombres, and even multi-colored ombres as well. Whatever your color preference and style, the ombre is the chameleon of hair color and will match YOU!

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Our second favorite aspect of ombres is the low-maintenance factor.   Because it’s designed to look like a “grown-out” color, the 4-6 week root retouch goes out the window, and you can wear the color for a much longer time, stretching out your salon visits. While this does mean that the ombre is significantly more work up front—expect approximately three or more hours in the salon—and comes at a slightly higher price tag, it’s totally worth it if you prefer the low-maintenance hair life.

Alongside the low-maintence aspect, ombres are pretty easy to transition away from once you’ve decided you’re done with the look. If you’ve kept your roots and mid-lengths at or close to your natural color, you can choose to either chop off the lightened ends if you’re up for a fun, shorter ‘do, or you can color the ends back to your natural color. Either way, there’s less of a growing out, transitional process as sometimes occurs when you’ve decided to grow out, say a full head of classic highlights.

We definitely still dig the ombre, and are looking forward to customizing YOUR ombre look. Look for our post about BALAYAGE coming soon!