What exactly is the balayage hair color and why is it that we love it so much?
Just as the name suggests, balayage is a French technique and its goal is to color the hair by adding very soft and natural highlights to it so that it looks as if it’s your own rather than it came from a bottle.
Or, at least, that’s how it all started.
Because, nowadays, balayage hair color has extended to non-traditional shades as well, as you will see in this comprehensive article.
Therefore, keep scrolling because it’s about to get good!
1. Ash Brown Balayage
Since this article is all about color, let’s start off with something nice and easy. This is an incredibly natural-looking ash brown.
The effect was obtained by means of balayage and adding a few caramel streaks into the brown.
2. Dark Chocolate with Golden Threads
Gosh, that sounds delicious and luxurious at the same time, doesn’t it?
The idea here was to open up the balayage hair color a bit, seeing as it was one solid block of dark color, which might have made the model look a bit older or too pale.
3. Chai Balayage Hair Color
We simply love it when stylists find inspiration for hair colors in nature, just like with this outstanding chai blonde.
It just seems to bring us closer to our roots, return us to a simpler time, and make everything seem a lot more natural.
4. Brown Bear Honey Balayage Hair Color
This creative name plays host to a most delicious shade of bronde. It starts off with a darker brown at the roots which melts into cinnamon and nutmeg and, eventually, a lighter blonde. This is a three-toned balayage.
5. Caramel and Brunette
If you can’t make up your mind as to which color would best highlight your eyes and features, that’s alright.
This is where balayage hair color ideas come in. Mix and match them up until you get a combination that will make you look like a goddess.
6. Iced Mocha and Cream
Who’s in the mood for some coffee? If you’re a big fan of the old cup of Joe, why not use its many colors and shades as inspiration for your hair?
This, for example, is iced mocha and cream, a dark coffee brown that ends with an almost vanilla blonde.
7. Sweet Copper Balayage Hair
Modern times bring modern colors for us to try out and wear and the biggest trend of all are copper colors. However, if you feel they are a bit too strong for you, you can always tone them down with a bit of blonde.
8. Strawberry Balayage Hair Color
Yes, not even the mighty strawberry blonde could escape the lure of the balayage hair color.
When subjected to it, it turns into delicious strawberries and cream shade that looks as if you’ve just spent a little too much time in the sun.
9. Gray and Beige Balayage Hair Color
Gray and beige don’t sound like two colors that one would like to mix, at first. However, when you’re in the hands of a good stylist or when you’re creative and skilled enough yourself, magic really can happen.
10. Rich Brunette and Caramel
What goes better with a rich brunette in terms of balayage hair color than a bit of caramel slowly drizzling from the tips of the strands. No, we’re not talking about real caramel, just the color. It will light up all your features!
11. Champagne Balayage
Here is a truly luxurious shade that you can wear on very special events such as your wedding day, New Year’s Eve, or prom.
This champagne colored blonde works perfectly well with a golden dress or some pearl jewelry.
12. Blonde over Natural
Another way of getting a great balayage hair color is by simply adding something to your natural hair. For example, these are a few nuances of blonde over the model’s natural dark brown hair.
13. Chocolate Caramel Balayage
We all love the chocolate and caramel combination when it comes to desserts. But did you know you can also wear it in your hair?
Here’s a suggestion. Curl up only your dark caramel strands, so that you can make them pop out even more.
14. Dark and Golden Walnut
Opposites attract and emphasize each other in this balayage hair color combination. It’s a dark brunette with golden walnut dripping from it, which simply makes it look so luxurious and expensive.
15. Hipster Balayage Hair
If you want to try the hipster balayage thing, you have two options. Either you go full natural or you go for an unconventional color.
This is what the natural option would look like. Simply start off with your natural hair and add some highlights or lowlights to it, depending on your color.
16. Creamy Summer Hair
Are you wondering what creamy summer means? It’s this exact shade of beige to platinum blonde that looks like a huge dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
And that would be perfect for your summer days at the beach or swimming in the waves like a little mermaid.
17. Rose Gold on Brunette
In fact, this has a lot more rose in it than gold, but you can still see a hint of the precious metal in there somewhere.
The balayage hair color starts off with brunette and a very dark plum and finishes with the aforementioned rose gold.
18. Light Ash Blonde
Does it get more natural than this? In fact, this balayage hair color is almost so solid and beautiful that you can’t even notice the balayage in the first place. But we know it’s there, don’t we girls?
19. St. Tropez Balayage Hair Color
If you were looking for a fancy shade of blonde, look no more because you’ve found it.
The St. Tropez bottle blonde will help you on the way to getting a great balayage. It’s warm, sunny, and colorful just like, you’ve guessed it, St. Tropez!
20. Ice Blonde Balayage Hair Color
Do you want to look sophisticated and grown-up? Then this is the shade for you.
Ice blonde has always been a favorite among fair-haired ladies around the world and the good news is that you can now turn it into a balayage as well.
21. Sunset Balayage Hair Color
Just as previously stated, when it comes to color, you can get your inspiration from anywhere in nature.
Sunsets are a great way to start for the myriads of shades they contain. This is a sunset balayage that started from a shade of brown.
22. Boho Balayage Hair Color
For the boho look, you will need not only the balayage color per se but the curls that go with it and represent it so well. Bust out your old curling iron from a drawer and start spinning some curls. Bohemian or what?
23. The Angelina Jolie
Yes, even celebrities love balayage hair color ideas because it brings them one step closer to their natural beauty.
Here is the iconic Angelina Jolie with a reverse balayage. The lighter shades are on top of her head while the darker ones are at the bottom.
24. Tan Blonde Balayage
Did you know that during summertime you can match your skin tan with your hair tan? Yes, now you can get a shade of blonde called tan blonde and you can lighten it up or darken it down until it resembles your skin tone.
25. Sun Kissed Hair Color
This is a variation of the tan blonde, but one that doesn’t limit itself to blonde hair.
Inside the sun-kissed palette, you can also find all kinds of browns, coppers, ashes, and golden shades.
Use one or mix and match them for a splendid result.
26. Bobs and Beach Waves
So, you’ve got your balayage hair color but what do you do with it now? You also need a refreshment on the cut.
Here is a choppy and wiry bob with some lovely beach waves mixed in. Invest in a good sea salt spray to copy this look.
27. Warm Cinnamon
Getting ready for the fall season has never been easier than with this warm cinnamon balayage hair color. If you look closely, you’ll also notice some raw cocoa bean brown lowlights hanging underneath the cinnamon.
28. Dark Coconut Balayage Hair Color
Despite popular belief, when stylists and experts talk about coconut in color, they don’t refer to white as the inside of the fruit. In fact, they refer to the hard exterior shell and its luscious and exotic brown shade.
29. Brown Hazelnut
We continue to take our inspiration from nature or, to be more specific right from the food section with a hazelnut brown that is bound to get your juices flowing this autumn.
The trick here is to spray some glossing agent on it every day before you leave the house.
30. Brown Wheat Hair Color
Here’s another color that would be perfect for the autumnal season as well as for the cold one. You can wear it with a beanie or a cap, not to mention oversized sweaters. It’s also great both with curls and straightened.
31. Light Almond Balayage
Light almond is the kind of color that would be perfect for the office. It’s trendy and cool but sufficiently demure so that you can still comply with your office’s dress code. Oh, did we mention that we absolutely love it?
32. Milk Cocoa Balayage
This combination starts with your natural hair at the roots and slowly descends into a delicious whirlwind of a tall glass of milk cocoa. It gets lighter and lighter as the shade reaches the tips of the strands, as it should.
33. Darkness to Ashes Balayage Color
This is exactly what this hair color looks like. The top half looks shrouded in complete darkness while the bottom half looks like it’s been turned to ashes. What we mean to say is that it’s a matte ash blonde with just a hint of rose.
34. Rose and Blonde
Speaking of roses, here’s a cool combination not of rose and gold, as we’ve grown accustomed to in the past few years, but of rose and straightforward blonde. The result is much more raw and street looking.
35. Milky Gray Balayage
The way these colors are stacked on top of each other simply has us mesmerized. It’s a work of perfection and art and we simply cannot take our eyes off it.
The tones combined here are dark gray at the top, and light gray descending mixed with strands of beige for some warmth.
36. Opal Platinum
As if platinum wasn’t a sufficiently amazing color, you can always raise the stakes and add a bit more sheen to it with an opal glow. In this way, your platinum hair won’t be matte anymore, but shiny and glowy.
37. Brass Blonde Hair Color
Brass is just another branch of the copper family tree, so you don’t have anything to worry about. They are very cool and trendy colors that have made it all the way to the top of the trends in the past few years.
38. Light Wood and Honey
This color’s name sounds like it should be worn by a forest fairy because this is exactly what you will look like.
It’s a sweet splintery and woody shade of blonde combined with lots of honey for making it look ripe and ready for fall.
39. Light Ginger Balayage
One light ginger beer, please? Ah, you only do hair coloring here? Then one light ginger balayage hair color, please!
Can’t ditch your ginger addiction? No problem! Wear it on your head like the true queen that you are.
40. Bronde Balayage
How many times have you heard in the past few years the term ‘bronde’? We’re guessing one too many times. Well, now it’s time to jump on the trend wagon and sport some bronde yourself.
41. The 1, 2, 3, 4… Shades of Copper
We lost count on the way but it doesn’t matter because this is not gray, it’s copper and we love it!
It’s mixed with a little bit of strawberry blonde here and a little bit of beige there, to give it the impression of depth and architecture.
42. Vanilla Lush and Light Mocha
What does this exactly entail? Just as the name suggests, this is a combination of a light mocha shade, just like the coffee streaked with some vanilla strands, lush enough to highlight everything.
43. Lilac Balayage Hair
Here is one of the balayage unconventional colors we talked about in the beginning. It’s a pastel lilac adorned with some lighter strands to make it look as natural as possible. After all, that’s what balayage is all about.
44. Purple Balayage Color
Lilac’s older sister is purple. This time it’s mixed with plum and indigo for a truly witching and mesmerizing effect.
If you happen to have natural brunette hair, we suggest you try this one. If you want to be bold, you can even add a dash of pink.
45. Dark Rose Gold
Here is a darker version of everyone’s favorite, the rose gold. The metallic sheen plus the fact that it’s a solid block of color makes it look like the hair of a superheroine. Make sure your makeup is matte for this one.
46. Light Tangerine and Cream
Although tangerines aren’t typically served with cream, you can use this combination when it comes to a balayage hair color. Use the cream-colored strands as lowlights and place them on the inside of the mass of hair.
47. Pink Rosewood Balayage
For a complete makeover, you can always dress from head to toe in this color. Seeing as rosewood is one of the most beautiful colors out there, we don’t see why not. You can even have your nails done in the same shade.
48. Forest Green Hair Color
If you’re planning on going green, then you will need some highlights for this one as well, seeing as it is quite a dark and cold color.
We recommend some light gray strands here and there, cleverly hidden among the trees of the forest.
49. Blue Balayage Hair Color
This example actually mixes balayage and ombre with a fabulous result. Start with a raven brunette hair and finish off with a schoolyard inky blue streaked with some blonde highlights that open everything up to the light.
50. Sea Foam Balayage
Just look at this gorgeous seafoam balayage. This is how a mermaid hair would look like if they were real and swimming among us. Tones of sea blue and aquamarine as well as sandy and rainy grays on the bottom.
Wow!
51. Solar Yellow Balayage
A lot of drugstore brands have put out special dyes to comply with the unconventional colors trend, which means that you can now do it yourself right at home, without the help of a specialist.
(But we still encourage you to ask for help.)
52. Lavender Balayage Hair Color
Pastels are still going strong as a trend after all this time. Therefore, hurry up and get this beautiful lavender shade, for example, which is perfect for spring. It will transition seamlessly from winter to the warm season.
53. Golden Balayage
If we’re talking about color trends, then we have to mention the metallics. They have gained a lot of traction, not just when it comes to hair, but makeup as well. Gold is one of them, alongside copper and brass.
54. Copper Balayage
As mentioned above, here’s copper, a massive hit in the past seasons. This color is vibrant and strong, matching any eye color and skin shade out there. Combine it with metallic makeup, and you have a winner.
55. Auburn Balayage
We also have an idea for your autumn hair color. Meet auburn, the color no one can stop talking about. It mirrors perfectly the natural shades of fall itself, incorporating the changing leaves and brown tree bark.
Ready to Change Your Look?
So, which one of the 50 balayage hair color ideas did you like best?
The natural ones that included tens of different shades of brown, the stellar blondes, such as the St. Tropez and opal platinum, or the non-traditional colors such as the aquamarine balayage?
Let us know in the comment section below which one you are planning on getting!
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Susan is a successful hair stylist who chose to combine two of her biggest passions: writing and styling! When she is not sharing her experience with out readers, Susan updates her skills and knowledge with new styling courses and trainings. She specializes in event hair and makeup and is working on her own illustrated hairstyle book.
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