Q&A for How to Highlight Hair

Be sure to use a sulfate-free shampoo and a deep conditioner to keep your hair moisturized. You can also use protein treatments to help strengthen your hair, but doing them too much can make your hair brittle.

Blonde hair is ideal for highlighting, just choose a mild product and follow the instructions on the box. Highlights on naturally blonde hair will appear more blended than on dark hair.

Highlighting and relaxing hair is a lot of stress on the hair. You'll need to wait at least 3 weeks between services and I'd recommend using a gentle lightener with a mild developer, like 10 Volume.

You can cut it before or after highlighting it. You may want to check out How to Have Healthy Hair .

Any hair coloring, lightening, highlighting or processing works best on unwashed hair. Your hair needs its natural oils. Since you are about to apply products that can be damaging and dry hair out its important that your hair have its natural oils. Color/lighten/highlight hair two days after washing. It depends on your personal preference and how much oil your hair produces naturally. Styling products or even dry shampoo can effect how your hair "takes" color.

Wait at least 3 weeks for your hair to recover.

Most are around 30 minutes. Do a strand test first to determine how long is enough.

You can put in some lowlights in by adding some streaks of your natural hair color in between the highlights.

You would definitely want to do all the colors at the same time. It would take a little longer than doing regular highlights just because you'd have to be very careful applying the dye and keeping the highlights separate. I would count on it taking maybe 2-3 hours in total.

Yes, it damages hair and causes split ends.

There are many hair color kits available at drug and department stores, if you want to do it yourself. Or if you prefer a more professional look, you can go to your hairdresser.

No, beacuse the bristles are too wide. A dye kit should come with a utensil to use for highlighting your hair.

Start in the front so the lightest pieces will frame your face.

You can purchase a dye kit from your local supermarket, as they're much more affordable than a salon.

No, this isn't a good idea, you need to perm your hair first, and a week later you can dye it. Always do it in this order, don't dye it first and then perm, as this can result in hair breakage and/or loss.

Buy your highlights in a gold color. Do not mix the colors, as the results will likely not be very good.

The bristles are probably too wide, but you could try this method. A regular bristle brush is a better option.

You could do that, but it does affect the color. If your shampoo is too aggressive, the color will fade and look dull after a little while. There are shampoos that are more color-friendly, so I would recommend using one of those. Also, I don't know what color your highlights are, but if they are blonde, a little bit of grey shampoo (which is purple) combined with your actual shampoo works really well.

Professionals may take between 2 hours and 4 hours to complete the job. For DIY, it depends on your speed and the time it takes for your hair to catch it. It also depends on what color you are trying to use, and how many highlights you are adding to your hair.

Take a chunk of hair and place the hair on tin foil, then take the dye and run it over the chunk in the foil. Fold up the foil, and repeat with another chunk of hair. Within a couple hours, you will have dark blue highlights.

It might do a little, but it won't have that much of an effect and you would have to do it a lot of times. I used to have dark brown hair (although that's very different from black, they're close) and hydrogen peroxide blonde spray did work for me. If I were you, I would just bleach it (either at home or at a hair salon). Bleach will definitely work, and even if you have to do it a few times, you can take your hair to platinum blonde with enough bleach.

Yes. Combining methods can have disastrous effects due to interacting chemicals (citric acid in lemons and ammonia, bleach, etc.).

Use a good quality moisturizing conditioner. This will make your hair less likely to split, and it will also prevent it from drying out due to the lemon juice.

Take smaller sections for less chunk, or, using the end of a rat tail comb, weave through the sections of hair and separate them so only some hairs are colored. This has the added the effect of looking more natural.

I have dirty blond hair as well, you can't dye your hair blond at first. With darker hair colors, you need to bleach your hair with chemicals or natural methods. You (sadly) cannot just go and dye your hair.

It depends if you like your highlights being on the side. If you want, you can cut some thin bits of paper and color them the color your want to. Then put the papers on your side or both sides to see what you like. Then dye your hair that way. Also, it depends what type of salon you go to. Ask your hairdresser at your salon what type of shampoo.

No, eating dye could be very dangerous and could lead to negative health effects from the chemicals used in the dye.