Create Beautiful Hair Highlights at Home Part 1

Marco Pelusi, Stylist at Marco Pelusi Hair Studio:

Hi, I'm Marco Pelusi from Marco Pelusi Hair Studio in West Hollywood. Often times in the salon when doing color, we'll do highlight services. You at home, may wish to perform those services yourself. Therefore, you may to need to go to a store and purchase box color in order to achieve this. So it's my pleasure, my sincere pleasure today, to show you some simple quick tips in order to do that at home. So let's get started.

To begin, I am going to mix our highlighting formula in a bowl. I think if you're going to be highlighting your hair at home, it's a great idea to invest in a plastic bowl and a plastic brush to be able to have better control when you highlight your hair. So I'm going to add a bit more of our developer. I've added the lightener in the bowl. I think if you have darker hair or previously colored hair it's a good idea to purchase a lightener or bleach when you go to the store to purchase your highlighting formula.

Then mix it up to your desired consistency and I'm getting a consistency that I like to work with, with this brush. Once you've achieved the pudding-like consistency, so that it's thick and so that it's easily controlled by you, then we are ready to go.

So, I wanted to tell you a little bit about foils. You can purchase this at any grocery store and cut them to the size you would like. This is the size I've chosen for myself and we are only going to apply a few foils around the front of the face to achieve some highlights.

Alright, so let's get to work on the hair. One of the things I think is important, if you are doing this at home, is to wear a nice pair of gloves, which are very reasonable. Also, I think it's important to wear something, a piece of clothing, that you're not that concerned with getting stains on, such as a white t-shirt. I also think it's a good idea to pick up a comb that you feel comfortable sectioning with and a couple of clips to be able to clip back your hair. Nothing that is difficult.

I'm going to go back, mid-way back, through Charlie's hair and I'm just going to clip up some of the hair I'm not going to highlight. We really only want to highlight in the front by the face to give her beautiful hair highlights. You see how easy this is. I'm just going to clip that away. With any comb you feel comfortable with, go in and slice a section. The idea is to do thin sections, about an eighth of an inch. Wherever you feel comfortable, slice an eighth of an inch section and again it doesn't have to be perfect but I think it's a good idea to use foils. We talked about you cutting them to your desired length. I would just place the foil in however you feel comfortable and apply the lightener formula of choice. Try to get as close to the scalp as you possibly can. You may not be able to do it as perfectly because you are going to be working on the top of your head.

The foil is great because what it will do is hold the heat in and you'll achieve an even lighting. So just fold the foil up as neatly as you possibly can and put it away. Take another little section and skip it and put another foil in. Again, real simple slice, about an eighth of an inch. We are working towards the front of your head. That's where most people will want to see the highlights anyway, toward the front of your head. So again, put it in as comfortably as you can and apply the lightener as close to the scalp without touching the scalp. You really don't want to touch your scalp with lightener, especially box lightener that you purchase at the store. You just want to keep it off the scalp. Lightener is for off the scalp lightning. Flip it away and same thing on the other side. I'm just going to put in maybe five or six foils total. That's all you really need to achieve some lighting towards the bangs. The area we know as the bangs.

One of the things I think is so important when you are going purchase a highlighting kit at a store, a drugstore, or at a beauty supply store is if you happen to be lucky enough to visit a beauty supply store and at least be able to ask one of the professionals that works at the beauty supply. That's your best bet but if you are not able to do that, I think the most important thing is to use lightener instead of color when you're buying a box to treat your highlights at home, especially if you have darker hair. If you use a box color, just a box color, you may end up with red or brassy or uneven results. So my suggestion is to actually use a lightener or bleach as your highlighting formula.

The most important part about using bleach or lightener is, as I said, to use something to hold it in place. So it does not go in unwanted places and also to wear gloves during the process, because you don't want to get any of the lightener or the bleach on your hands.

So you can see I just put a few foils in the front. You are totally capable of doing that yourself. I would rather you use a foil such as this or something that's going to give you better control, rather then the cap, which has the holes individually in them. The problem with the cap is if there is any overlapping you can cause breakage and you can end up with really unhealthy hair. So I would rather, you see, you use foil then a cap.

Remember it's vital, very important and necessary, for you to always follow the manufactures' instructions in order to get a beautiful hair color. As far as process time goes, I would say a maximum of twenty minutes to allow these foils to process when you are doing this yourself at home. Although, I would highly recommend for you to look at the foil, open it up and actually look at it every three to four minuets. With this small amount of foils it should be no problem for you to pick up and for you to open up one or two of them. Take a look every three to four minutes to see what you are looking for is the lightness that you're looking for. So if you want it to be a few shades lighter, that's what you need to see. If you want it to be much lighter, then you'll probably need to leave it on a few more minutes, but I would not let it go past twenty minutes. So what we are going to do now is to allow our foils to process and we'll be back.

OK, so every few minutes, I've been checking the level of lightness to see what lifted and we are done as you can see. From this foil we've achieved several levels lighter and if you have a problem seeing the lightness behind this product, then you can take a dry white towel and rub a little bit of the product away so you can see the color underneath the product. I wouldn't use a wet towel because it might fool you into thinking it's a little bit darker than it actually is. Always want to follow manufactures' instructions in terms of timing but again every three to four minutes is a good idea before you shampoo.