How to Lighten Your Hair: Home Highlight Kit vs. At-Home Bleaching vs. Professional Hair Lightening

How to lighten your hair? Should you use a home highlight kit, bleach your hair on your own (we don’t recommend that), or maybe opt for a visit to a professional hair colorist? It all depends on your needs and preferences. In this article, we will explain when to choose each of these
options, so we invite you to read on!

Understanding Hair Lightening

Hair lightening can dramatically transform your appearance, brightening and adding vibrancy to your locks. However, it’s essential to approach this process with care, as it involves chemically altering your hair’s natural pigment. This applies to any kind of lightening – no matter whether it’s subtle or bold.

Exploring the Home Highlight Kit

A home highlight kit (https://www.madison-reed.com/shopping/light-works-highlights) provides an accessible and budget-friendly option for adding dimension to your hair. Usually, it comes with everything you need, including a developer, lightening powder, and sometimes a toner to neutralize brassy tones. How to use it?

The application process involves selecting strands of hair and applying the lightening mixture to achieve scattered lightness, mimicking the effects of natural sun-kissed highlights. Usually, a home highlight kit will contain either a classic cap or fingertip tools that will help you apply the lightener precisely. Remember, while DIY can be empowering, it requires a careful approach to avoid patchy or overly harsh results – if you’re going for complex highlights, it might be better to reach out to a pro.

Comprehending At-Home Bleaching

At-home bleaching is a more intensive process aimed at achieving significant lightness across your entire head. This method is suitable for those desiring a drastic change, such as going from dark to light hair. It involves mixing a bleach powder with a developer to strip the hair of its natural color. However, bleaching can wreak havoc on your scalp if done incorrectly. Thus, if you really want to bleach your hair at home, you need to know exactly what you’re doing – here, the risk isn’t a bad hairstyle, like in the case of home highlight kits, but permanent damage to your scalp.

Professional Hair Lightening

Seeking professional help for hair lightening is the most reliable and safest route, especially for significant color changes or for those with previously colored or damaged hair. Hair colorists have the expertise to customize the lightening process to your specific hair type and desired outcome using
professional-grade products and techniques. Additionally, a colorist has the skills to create even the most complex highlights (mixed with lowlights), balayage, and so on. So, it’s the perfect option if you have something special in mind.

The Takeaway

So, what will it be: a home highlight kit, bleaching, or a visit to a pro colorist? Make the choice based on your needs to achieve the best outcome. After all, you deserve to be beautiful!