Balayage Edinburgh

Balayage hair colour is a popular technique to add a reflective dimension and luminosity to your hair. At Myles Hairdressing Salons in Edinburgh, our hair stylists offer balayage treatment, as it’s the most versatile colour service for our clients.

Balayage is a French word, which means “to sweep”. The hair treatment involves high and low lights painted by hand at random, through strands of hair. The majority of the colour is focused from the mid-lengths to the ends and subtle ribbons are swept through the hairline too.

Most people in Edinburgh associate balayage with blonde highlights, but this hair technique is about so much more than adding a sun-kissed glow to the strands of hair. As it is a flexible hair styling method, we can use all manner of shades, from pastels to dark browns or rainbow brights.

Balayage adds creative flair to your hair, a dreamy look that many A-list celebrities and Scottish beauty influencers are adopting. It’s the kind of hairstyle that actually flatters everyone, no matter what their hair base colour or hair length. Anyone can work in a scattering of lightened hair sections.

Some hair trends fade away but balayage has been around for a long time and doesn’t show signs of going anywhere in the hair and beauty industry. Actually, freehand painted hair processes are getting more and more popular, proving that balayage hair treatment stands the test of time.

There are key differences between balayage, ombre and dip-dye techniques:

1. While both balayage and ombré can be created freehand (with or without the use of foils), ombré means the roots are natural and the mid-lengths to ends are all lightened evenly for a smooth, dark-to-light graduation. This is in contrast to balayage’s more painterly approach, which sees ribbons of light and dark shades scattered all over – not just from the mid-lengths downwards.

2. The dip-dye final effect makes mid-lengths to ends look as though they’ve been, well… dipped in a dye that contrasts against the natural base colour. This could be a bright blonde, or something bolder, like blue, pink or aqua. There’s none of the soft gradient you see with ombré and balayage – just a clear line that separates the two colours.

Balayage can be tailored to flatter the base hair colour so it basically can be used by anyone. From warm blondes to dark brunettes and the most radiant redheads, balayage treatment is a superb result. Hair highlights start inches down from the root, so they are meant to look grown-out. This means that is effectively at low maintenance hairstyle that enables softer regrowth.

The main concern for balayage to work is whether the hair is in good enough condition for the lift required. Usually balayage hair treatment in Edinburgh involves a pre-lightening product, so please take good care of mid-lengths, and ends before your colour appointment. The perfect base for balayage would be a cosseting mask, which helps to pamper hair back to its nourished best.

With Balayage treatment, there is no one size fits all appointment. The balayage technique can take anywhere between 45 minutes and 3 hours. The factors we consider for the length of appointment include the length of your hair, porosity and your desired finish. It is recommended that you attend a consultation first to ensure you’ll have plenty of time for your transformation.

In some cases, we will carry out a strand test and this will show how your hair responds to the formula, so we can fine-tune the colour and judge how long the entire process will take.

The Balayage freehand technique is not best suited to camouflaging silver strays but the ribbons can be tactically placed to disguise a few strands. Full grey coverage requires a permanent tint that saturates the roots. However, after shading some grey patches, you can start sweeping those light-reflective radiance boosting ribbons with simple balayage.

Foilyage is the name for balayage that’s processed using foils. You still paint highlights freehand and get creative with your placement, but the strands are wrapped in foils to ensure plenty of lift from the pre-lightener. 

At Myles Hairdressing hair salons in Edinburgh, we use a pre-lightening product, which gives colourists ultra-precision for this freehand hair technique and it delivers up to seven levels of lift. The product has a creamy consistency, ensuring it stays in place wherever you apply it, so you don’t have to worry about colour bleeding, if you do a balayage without foils.

Balayage is particularly known for being a foil-free process, which might mean that we up the volume of our colour developer to ensure we still get plenty of life, doing open-air painting. The beauty of balayage is that it allows our stylists to get artsy with highlighting techniques, sweeping colour on where they see fit rather than follow a pattern.

There is a buzz around balayage, and we recommend gathering photos of what you are looking for so that we can judge what is required. Your idea of a subtle balayage may be a lot different to our expectations and other hair salons. We will go over some questions with you and work out how light you would like to go and show you inspiration from our previous customers or model photos.