The Ultimate Balayage Guide For Every Stylist (2024)

What Is Balayage?

The Ultimate Look

How To Talk To Your Clients About Balayage

Balayage: The Art Behind The Technique

Let’s Talk Differences

Different Types of Balayage

How Much To Charge For Balayage

All Balayage Everything

Let’s get one thing right out the gate --- BAH – LEE- AGHE.

If you can’t pronounce it or spell it, you probably shouldn’t be offering it to your clients, so it’s important you understand how to say it.

You can say BAH-LAY-AGHE, too, if you want to add a little pizazz to your pronunciation.

You’ve probably heard of Balayage before, and seeing as you are a hair-expert, you can probably spot a Balayage look from a mile away, but do you understand what a Balayage really is?

If not, we’re here to help.

Here’s the scoop on Balayage styles:

Most of your customers, and maybe even some stylists, think that Balayage is an end-result, a look, or a trend, but Balayage is more than that.

Balayage is a technique that a colorist or stylists employs to accomplish an immense variety of different looks.

Still confused? No worries, let’s look at it a different way.

Consider foils that stylists use to color hair. Foils are a tool or a technique that a colorist employs to get the look they want, but the foil themselves aren’t the look.

Balayage is the same! It is a technique where a colorists paints on lightener in a scientific, artistic way.

There’s a time and place for foils – they’re great conductors of heat and do important things for full highlights, but the Balayage strategy is a technical art-form that works perfectly for natural, blended, highlights and nuances for your follicles.

This hair coloring technique happens when a stylist hand paints highlights so they look natural, have plenty of depth and dimension, and resembles the sun’s effects.

All that to say, Balayage guarantees you won’t accidentally end up with that early 2000s stripey-blocky-Nicole-Ritchie-esque highlighter look.

But Balayage isn’t as simple as just painting on lightener.

Like other techniques, it requires some serious science. The formula, the application, the process – it’s all incredibly technical and complicated, but don't panic, we’ll break it down for you.

Get our balayage cheat sheet below!

First though, let’s talk about where Balayage comes from.

You might think it’s a brand-new trend that’s captivated the coloring scene in a storm of magical, sweeping style.

The Balayage style is indeed sweeping, but it’s definitely not new.

What you might not know about Balayage is that it’s a French style. In fact, it literally means “to sweep” or “sweeping” in French and is a direct reference to both the sweeping motions of Parisian paint processes and the super small brooms that are used by Parisian stylists.

Something else you might not know about Balayage -- it’s been around for decades.

In fact, it’s been around long before foils or frosting techniques graced salon chairs worldwide.

Some sources say that the Balayage style started exclusively in the Carita salon in Paris and that, at the time, it was known as ‘Balayage a coton,’ a direct nod to the strips of cotton they used to keep colored hair separate from the untouched hair.

The technique stayed safely nestled in France for years – even though we really could have used its subtle, natural style during the incredibly-dramatic-very-foiled-highlighted days of the 80s.

Where was the soft, sunny beauty of Balayage when we were frying our colored hair into oblivion with heavy foils?

Somewhere safe, a beautiful French woman’s naturally-colored-looking head in Paris, surely.

But when Balayage finally crossed the pond and made its way to America -- albeit, slowly – it made quite the splash. The Balayage technique found its way from France and rooted itself deep in the New York hairstyle-culture in the very late 1980s and early 1990s.

Since then, it’s been continually refined, updated, and experimented with. That’s the neat thing about Balayage – because it’s a technique and not an end result, it allows stylists and colorists to create the ultimate color customization and leaves room for a variety of looks.

How Did the Trend Get Going Again?

Often, it surprises customers – and even a few stylists and colorists – when we say that Balayage has been deeply rooted into hair styling and artistry for decades.

Like we said, it didn’t make its way to America until the 90s (well, the 80s, but we were all so distracted with that heavy-foil-80s-trend we sort of didn’t notice it).

Even so, 90s Balayage could really only be found on U.S. celebrities, the earliest adopters of the Balayage (a-la-Sarah-Jessica-Parker in the Sex and the City years).

Though Balayage has had a presence in our hair-culture for decades, it really only begun to get super huge among clientele in the last few years. In fact, it’s really only been about the last five years that’s its really kicked up a notch to its peak popularity.

It’s fair to say that Balayage is super popular for tons of reasons, and you know we’re going to get into the whys.

Take notes,your clients are going to want to know why you’re recommending a Balayage-style-color to them.

First and foremost, the reason that the trend is going strong is because it’s elegant.

Balayage gives your clients that natural, never-been-to-a-salon-my-hair-just-looks-like-this color that people fawn over.

More so, because it’s a technique and not an end result or a particular style, you can use it accomplish tons of distinct looks for your client.

Because the color is painted on hair at random, you can use the technique and place the color in such a way that it can be most complimentary to your client – think bone structure, facial features, skin tone, and more.

Now that you’ve got a little background on the Balayage technique (let’s be honest, you’re probably a pro by now) you should have no problem marketing it to your clients.

You can give them a little history (which we know people love), tell them the reasons the Balayage could work wonders for them (another thing they’ll love), and even point out Balayage techniques on their favorite celebrities (let’s be honest, this is going to seal the deal for sure).

But how should you really go about introducing the Balayage idea to your clients? Especially to cautious clients who might never have heard of it?.

Hear us out, we’ve got some super helpful tips and steps for introducing your clients to Balayage.

Disclaimer:Only Offer It If You’re Ready, but When You Are, let ‘Em Know

Not that you ever would, but don’t include the Balayage technique on your menu until you’re totally ready to do it. Balayage is an effortless look, but it’s a pretty complicated technique (we’ll get into that part more a bit later).

Don’t offer this technique until you feel fully prepared, that way your clients will keep coming back to you for their Balayage needs.

The last thing you want to do is alienate a great client or prevent new clients from coming to you because you tried to take on a bit more than you could chew.

That being said, once you know what you’re doing, don’t be afraid to let your community know you’re offering something unique.

Attend Balayage classes, get with some Balayage experts, and make sure your website and social media pages both boast your new skill.

The most important thing to remember about Balayage is thatit’s not an end-product, instead, it’s a technique.Think of it as a highly-technical means to an end, the tool that can get your client exactly what they want.

Balayage technique is a hand-painting style where you’ll color your clients’ hair by picking and choosing the strands that you’ll sweep color onto.

Most of the time, the color or lightener is going to be painted onto individual parts of your client’s hair.

It seems like a freehand fashion, but you’ll need to take a lot of factors into consideration when thinking about placement – skin tone, facial features, bone structure, etc.

Your client will see you creating a freehand masterpiece, but there’s always science and strategy behind your paintbrush.

Ombre Balayage

You know what an Ombre is, and you know how to do it with foil, but have you ever considered trying it with a Balayage technique?

While the point of a Ombre is to have a distinct change in color about halfway down the strands of the hair, a Balayage Ombre could really tie the whole together and make it have a more natural, sun-kissed glow.

What’s better than an Ombre?Anatural, hand-painted Ombre that won’t be a pain to maintain and won’t look blocky when it grows out.

Sombre Balayage

What about a Sombre Balayage? This makes even more sense than Balayaging an Ombre because it’s intended tolook softer, subtle, and less statement-worthy.

By hand-painting a somber onto your client’s beautiful locks, you can accomplish a beautifully-natural, sun-reflecting style.

And the best part is, no foils were necessary to get there. Growing out the Sombre that’s been hand-painted (sans foils) will make the growing out process less painful and far subtler for your client.

Babylights

The Balayage is the perfect color technique to accomplish some gorgeous babylights. These tiny, subtle highlights that resemble natural sun-kisses that appear around your hairline are delicate, subtle, and sweeping – the perfect look for a Balayage technique.

With babylights, you’d typically use small foils with very tiny amounts of dye on each strand, but why go through the mess when you could paint on some natural, wavy, subtle lighter strands with the Balayage technique?

Colormelt

Balayage can also be used to create the perfect colormelt style. When you colormelt, you’re mixing multiple shades together with hopes of creating a seamless darker-root-to-lighter-end finish.

Painting on that color with a Balayage technique can make this complicated dye job at lot less daunting.

Typically, you’re trying to accomplish a darker root with a light tip while melding multiple colors and maintaining a natural look. Doing this with foils can overly-complicate the process, so we suggest opting into the Balayage style for the best results.

Ecaille

Think tortoiseshell beauty when you consider the ecaille style.

This multi-dimensional style is accomplished with Balayage techniques and a Sombre-mindset using a palette of caramel, golden blondes, chestnuts, chocolates, and more.

Like an Ombre, you’d paint on a darker color than your roots at the top of your head, then paint on a lighter color toward the end of the strands.

Then, you get super-Balayage-artsy, painting select strands light and dark for the perfect natural-but-stunning look.

The Balayage technique has been around for decades, and despite it’s recent pop back into the spotlight, it’s anything but a fading trend.

Balayage is timeless because of its simplistic, natural, subtle look, but also because it’s entirely personalized and created totally bespoke to the client.

You can Balayage dozens of clients and no two will ever look the same. Balayage is a highly customize-able technique that works specifically to the client you apply it to.

The Balayage technique requires specific training, lots of skill, and artistic license – in other words, it’s the key to unlocking the hair-artist in you.

Unleash your creativity, your craft, and your color skill.