I’ve been colouring my hair blonde for about 20 years, and I feel like I’ve tried every single technique over the years – full highlights, babylights, balayage, ‘Brazilian illuminage’ , moneypiece highlights, even the occasional home dye . Yet I’ve never really known what the best one is for my hair type and desired outcome – until now. I visited Haug London Haus in central London where I had a thorough consultation with the salon’s co-owner and colour whizz Siobhan Haug .
I explained that I love a creamy, beige blonde look but with a lived-in, rooty look that would grow out naturally without a strip of dark roots showing after a few weeks. I thought that traditional balayage – in which highlights are hand-painted throughout the lengths to give a sun-kissed look – might be the answer, but instead Siobhan used a technique called ‘foiliage’ on me. READ MORE: Aperol Spritz hair colour is summer's top shade inspired by Ella Thomas, Billie Piper and Tasha Ghouri Also known as ‘balayage highlights’, a trend that has hundreds of thousands of likes on TikTok, foiliage involves applying highlights with lightener and foils right up to the roots, and then blending it out with toner to give a lived-in effect.
This was also best suited to me as I already had existing highlights fairly high up to my roots (balayage works best when applied to uncoloured hair to get the right graduated effect). Siobhan explained another benefit to this technique: using lightener r.