Can you foil your own hair

All-over color can also move through the sections, transferring the color to areas you didn't want it to go—resulting in a blotchy finish. When deciding on which shade to go with, "choose a kit that's labeled for your starting point rather than your desired highlight color," says Kyle White, a colorist at Oscar Blandi in New York City.

If you grab a box that says "caramel highlights," it will look totally different on someone with a brown base versus someone with red strands. So look for highlight kits that say things like "for brown hair" instead. Bridgette Hill , a colorist and trichologist in NYC, suggests keeping your expectation to "natural highlighted tones" when doing at home highlights to keep hair at its healthiest.

The only difference between tinfoil and the foils you see the pros using is that the in-salon ones are typically pre-cut, making the colorist's work much speedier. In fact, Reynold's Wrap makes professional foils that are sold at beauty supply stores.

But be warned if you're using foils at home: "It's also a heat conductor, so when you wrap hair in a foil, it lightens faster. The bristles will pick up just the right amount of dye, and will spread it easily and not too perfectly onto each section during the application.

Applying highlights to curly hair? Wear gloves and apply the color with your fingers to individual curls. For curly girls, she also recommends avoiding the center and back of the hair, where the curl textures are tighter.

Instead, she says to "keep the highlights in the crown, face framing and the underneath sections behind both ears. I only watched tutorials featuring people highlighting their own hair by themselves, doing just a few foils. Hope you love it too! This is how we do it.

There are lots of other ways, but this works for us at this point. But you can check the foils every minutes to see how it's lifting with minimal touching, of course. Per Carhart's advice, you're going to start by clipping your hair into three sections: the two sides from the back of the ear, forward and the back. Even though you're sectioning all of your hair, "I would recommend doing as little as possible," she says.

Though you'll only be doing a minimal amount of upkeep, keeping all of your hair sectioned keeps you organized and helps to avoid any unnecessary messes or unwanted mess-ups. After your strand test has shown promise, you can do one or two layers of foils in the "T-zone" as KC suggests, right at the surface of your parting. Sectioning is only meant to keep your work area clean and organized. Since every single process application is going to have unique directions of their own, and likely a user-friendly applicator, we're going to use this space to discuss how to achieve a highlight touch-up by using the foil method that Carhart suggested.

You're going to start wherever your natural parting is, either on the side or down the middle. Place the thinly sectioned hairs onto your foil, and stretch them down taut against your head. Use your brush to gather a scoop of your bleach mixture and firmly press it down onto your strands as if you were painting a thick stroke of acrylic paint with a paintbrush.

You want it to be rich and thick but still spread out into an even layer. You shouldn't need too much since the sections you're working with are so fine. When it comes time to apply around the hairline, take a fine slice of hair out using your tail comb and weave the same way Carhart advised with the parting. Then, place a foil against your forehead or cheek, and lay the finely sliced hair on top of the foil.

If your application isn't saturated, you'll have a splotchy, spotty-looking bleach job. While Carhart thinks that the hairline is the easiest to do yourself, she warns that it still requires some serious hand-eye coordination.

The most important part of applying your bleach is to ensure it does not touch the scalp. Any hard to reach areas, Carhart simply says, "Don't do them. The toner's job is to neutralize the intense yellow shade that appears from bleaching and make it look more natural.

This is the secret sauce that eliminates brassiness and other unwanted tones to help you reach your desired outcome. When it comes to your toner, "keep it simple," says Carhart. If your hair is blonde, this is much easier. You wait until the highlights are a pretty color and then you take the foils off. Carhart tell us that the "sweet spot" for darker brunettes is shades lighter than their natural color. The safer, low volume peroxide that we're working with for these at-home touch ups will only lift you shades lighter.

So if you've been highlighting for a while and working with your colorist to go blonder from a super dark natural base color, you're better off resorting to throwing on a baseball cap and hiding those roots. If you're a dark brunette that only needs a light touch-up at the roots, just be sure not to overlap the bleach onto your previous color job as Carhart warned before.

The overlap could cause a funky color spot, or potential breakage. The potential of leaving the bleach on too long could also create a problem for your toning approach.

The color you want to see before you remove the foils to rinse is yellow. After the bleach has been thoroughly rinsed out, you'll apply your toner. After any color treatment or chemical treatment that heightens the hair's porosity levels, you want to be sure you're upping the conditioner and getting extra moisture back into the hair. You'll notice, especially after using bleach, that your hair feels straw-like, brittle, and extremely dried out, so a good conditioning treatment is crucial.

Turn to your conditioner after your toner is completely rinsed out and you've shampooed your hair. That way, you don't have to put yourself at risk of pulling the foils off too late. Blue conditioners will help neutralize the warmth if your hair pulls more orange or yellow. Otherwise, any deep conditioning treatment will work. You don't want to skip this step!

It'll add a boost of shine and softness to your strands that will help you feel like you just left the salon. Keep up this treatment until you lose that straw-like feeling when shampooing.

Now it's time to see your best efforts in action. Once I have my selection made, I clip the rest of my hair from that side of my head up and out of the way. Now, with my selection, I weave out pieces to highlight.

Definitely reference the video to see weaving in action, but it is exactly what it sounds like. You take the rattail comb and weave it in and out of the section of hair so you end up with the actual pieces to highlight. Weaving takes practice! I can do it somewhat ok on the sides of my head, but I cannot do it on the back of my head.

If you do not want to try the weaving technique, you can use your fingers to select pieces. There are even weaving combs on the market that select the pieces for you, but I find those difficult to use on myself. Remember, the more hair you weave or select, the chunkier your highlights will be. The less hair, the finer. Once you have weaved or done whatever you are going to do to select the strands to highlight, allow the rest of the hair that you will not be highlighting to fall to the side.

Set your selected strands aside so that you can prep your foil for placement. Step five in how to highlight hair at home with foils is all about getting your foil ready. I take the foil and fold the top edge over the rattail comb. I also like to pre-fold the sheet in half, then unfold it. Having that fold crease makes it easier to fold once you have the foil in your hair.

I find this step to be highly crucial. You are to grab the rattail comb with the foil wrapped around it, and place it under the hairs to be highlighted. If I was not operating the camera, I would have both of my hands in action in the below picture. I use one hand to gently pull down on the ends of the hair, but I use the hand holding the comb to gently pull up.

What you are doing here is pulling the foil taught to your head, getting it as close to the roots as possible. This is critical when it comes to applying the bleach. Imagine if the foil was hanging loosely, well below your roots.

For one thing, your roots will not get bleached. Once you have the foil pulled as taught to your head as you possibly can, it is time to gently slide the comb out from the foil, but leave the foil tightly placed against your head. Now you can paint the bleach on. Yes, I want you to think of the motion as painting. Always paint the bleach in downward strokes, never upwards.

If you are bleaching strands that have never been bleached before, then you will want to bleach the entire strands. Your hair may be much longer than your piece of foil, depending on your hair length, and that is ok! You will need to make sure you get all that hair into the foil and evenly covered in bleach before you fold the foil up.

What I do is I take the applicator brush and put some bleach on the tip. Then, I touch the brush to the ends of the hair. The hair will stick to the bleach, then I literally scoop the hair upwards and smush it onto the foil with the aid of the bleach. Your hair will stick to the already bleached hair in the foil. Then, paint a bit more on to make sure the ends are even.

My hair is already highlighted, so I work on the new growth only. I only paint the new growth, I never bleach over the already bleached hair. Once I hit the part of the hair strand that is already bleached, I overlap the bleach ever so slightly. This provides a nice blend so that no lines are evident. Now that your selected strands are bleached, it is time to fold the foil up into a nice little package. Start by folding it in half.

Then, fold it in half a second time. Finally, fold the left and right sides in. The foil will stay in your hair by itself, with the bleach sort of acting like glue. If you have any issues with foils slipping, you can use hair clips to hold them in place. They are completely optional, but I use metal hair clips meant for holding rollers in your hair for extra security. Now, you will repetitively keep doing steps three through seven until you have finished up the left and right sides of your head.

Then, you can proceed to the back. Keep in mind that you cannot see the back of your head. Unless you have some sort of elaborate mirror setup in your house, then you are completely blind. I am unable to weave on the back of my head. Honestly, I do not even make sections back there. I use my fingers and select chunks of hair to highlight. I select my chunks by going across the back of my head, and I drape the pieces across the top of my head and down my face so I do not lose them.

The video does a fantastic job of explaining the back of the head.