9 brown hair with blonde highlights ideas, from babylights to rebel streaks
It's no surprise that brown hair with blonde highlights remains one of the easiest (and prettiest) ways to wear hair in 2024. The best-of-both hair colour brings together the casual feel of brunette with the luminosity of blonde, to deliver a hair colour that feels bright, beautiful and low maintenance.
If you’re looking to intensify your strands, there are endless gorgeous highlighting techniques to choose from. They suit a broad range of aesthetics, too, whether you want something subtle and delicate (like balayage and babylights), or some high-contrast drama (see: rebel streaks and chunky '90s highlights).
The techniques are getting more specific and tactical, too. Modern highlights have the power to accentuate facial features and brighten complexions – like your own personal golden hour. You can use colour techniques to create the illusion of light across your strands, whether you want a mini glow-up, a low-maintenance look that will grow our seamlessly, or you want to amplify pretty texture. Where you concentrate that spotlight is up to you.
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Before deciding what direction you want to head in, we've answered a couple of Google's most-asked questions when it comes to brown hair with blonde highlights…
Of course, there's as many different shades of brown as there are of blonde and not all combinations will work for your natural colour, your skin tone or your preferred aesthetic. That's why it's important to sit down with your colourist to work out what you want to achieve. It's helpful to take inspo pictures, especially of people with a similar base or natural hair colour to you, and similar colouring. But, blonde highlights can look good across all different brunettes. In general, if you want a softer look, it's best to keep things low contrast, so if you have dark brunette hair, opt for a darker shade of blonde highlights, or more of a caramel or bronze. If you have mid-light brunette hair, you can push things brighter. That said, high-contrast moneypiece face-framing sections are still popular and nineties chunky highlights have made a return.
Again, this is down to personal preference and the vibe you want to achieve. If you want something statement you can choose shades that contrast and clash. If you want something softer, opt for a blonde that's only a few shades brighter than your natural colour. It's important to think about undertones, too. In general, cool-toned brunettes will suit cool-toned blondes, like ashy blonde. However, you may want to go for a warmer, honey hue for a little extra glow. Likewise, warm toned brunettes will find warm toned blondes the most complementary, but may want to dial down brassiness with some cooler highlights. Talk to you colourist about what you want to achieve and they can suggest the best combination for you.
Browse our pick of the best brown hair with blonde highlights looks we've seen for your next salon trip inspiration.
Balayage
The word Balayage is French for “sweep”. Instead of a hair colour, this is a colouring technique. The idea is to create areas of light and shade throughout the hair by hand painting (or sweeping) colour onto strands with a brush. The finished effect is a subtle all-over sunkissed look with lighter strands mixed amongst darker strands throughout hair. This is one of the most requested techniques in the salon so if you go in asking for balayage, your colourist will know exactly what you're looking for.
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Babylights
Babylights are when superfine strands of hair are coloured. It’s a technique that makes the hair appear multi-dimensional because of the gentle wisps of colour that are so micro, they’ll have everyone thinking you were born with it (no need to tell them otherwise). This is perfect if you're a little apprehensive about hair colour changes. It allows you to experiment with a sprinkle colour without committing to anything.
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Dear sun, where art thou?
Twilighting
Twilighting has nothing to do with Bella Swan, it's actually a mix of the above. Twilighting relies on a mix of balayage and babylights to create an ultra subtle, dimensional look. It offers up brunette hair with warm golden tones and is perfect for those with darker hair who want to try something trendy but not too drastic.
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Ombré
Ombré has been around for a while and sees a graduation of colour from darker at the roots, to lighter at the ends. For instance, deep brunette roots edging into caramel and honey mid-lengths with light blonde ends. Ombré can be as dramatic or subtle as you like.
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Sombré
Sombré is essentially soft ombré. Effectively it's a more delicate and subtle version of traditional ombre to make it look more subtle and natural. This is perfect if someone wants hints of a lighter hue without going full blonde. It gives light and depth and will grow out without leaving drastic bands of colour.
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Spotlight highlights
Particularly beautiful for curly and coily hair, spotlight highlights are kind of like balayage, but your curl pattern is taken into account so that the placement really helps to spotlight all that gorgeous movement and texture. “Essentially, it’s a way of hand-painting natural-looking highlights for a pretty pop of colour that truly shines through on curly and coily hair,” explains Charlotte Mensah, hair artist and founder of Manketti by Charlotte Mensah.
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Soft contouring for your curls.
Face framing and moneypiece highlights
Face framing, or moneypiece highlights involves highlighting the front section of hair around your face. These strands naturally tend to go blonder as they face the sun. It can help to brighten complexions, without committing to an all over colour. This is a perfect highlighting technique if you want to subtly change things up for the summer months. It gives the illusion of being blonder, without the maintenance.
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Kerching.
Rebel streaks
Rebel streaks are an amped up version of face framing. The throwback ‘90s technique creates a more statement contrast between the bleached sections either side of your face and the rest of your hair. It’s a commitment, but we love it.
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Chunky highlights
Another '90s reference, chunky highlights are bringing back wider statement blonde sections which are blended more obviously through darker strands. It's a bolder way to add some more defined dimension back into brunette hair and it's coming back in a big way (you can thank TikTok).
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For more from GLAMOUR's Senior Beauty Editor, Elle Turner, follow her on Instagram @elleturneruk
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