Home Highlighting kits- any experience?

[Jenda]

I need to whack some highlights in but am desperately poor at the moment! Has anyone used the home kits before and had any triumphs or disasters!?

I'm not keen on the cap hilight kits. Always seem to bleed through the holes and end uP with blonde circles!
To do a few highlights through the top I prefer foils :)
Jerome b blonde do a kit or you can make your own from household tin foil and use a sePerate colour- remember tint won't lift tint though so you'll need to buy bleach if you already have coloured hair :)
Jerome b blonde also do a bleach with 9 or 12% peroxide

Yes - triumph is the Scott Cornwall Foil Effects cap. It can be reused again and again, used for a multitude of "effects" (there is a very detailed book) and used for something called "true toning" where you pull the hair through, apply bleach, rinse it off with the cap still on, then apply semi permenant or permenant box colour to it, to ensure you get the correct colour and tone on your highlights.

It eliminates the nervous feeling of not quite knowing when to wash off the bleach, because you know you are just "pre lightening" your hair with the bleach and will achieve your correct highlight colour with semi or permenant.

It also gives a very good natural effect where you can pull quite small or more chunky sections through depending what you like.

I think its about a tenner though you have to then buy your bleach and your colour, but its worth it even for the very comprehensive book that comes with it.

There are various other kits available but this one does more, in my opinion.

The Scott Cornwall cap doesn't bleed through by the way - you can even rinse your hair and the water doesn't go through. Its great.

Its really good if say you wanted red highlights, because you can bleach up to light orange or canary yellow then apply permenant red colour. Whereas if you had dark brown dyed hair, you couldn't do that with foils alone - you'd have to have bleach foils then use a toner, which fades pretty quickly.

I've tried doing my own foils and I am just so cack handed I can't do it

Scott's cap is great though!

so its really easy even if you're not quite sure what you're doing! Do you buy the bleach and the colour you want the highlights?

What's your base colour Jenda and what sort of highlights do you want?

I find lots of the kits don't get mine pale enough but I am pretty light in the first place (def need bleach).

The one I really like is the lightest Garnier one, you apply it with a small brush in sections (you could foil these off but tbh I haven't noticed it leaching too much). It's pretty imprecise and you don't get an effect like a hairdresser's highlights, but I actually prefer it that way - I basically just do a couple of big sections at the front and then a few narrower ones around the crown. Looks very much like my hair does when it's been bleached by the sun. But would look weird if you were going a much lighter colour.

Jep, Jenda you buy 40 volume peroxide and bleach powder (Jerome Russell, Superdrug or whatever) and then choose your highlight "colour". Therefore it really doesn't matter if your hair is already dyed or what your base colour is, there is no danger of an orange disaster.

Leave the bleach on until its yellow, rinse, dry, apply your "colour" (so if you want caramel highlights you'd probably choose a dark golden blonde or beige blonde, if you want really light ashy blonde then you'd get a light ash blonde, etc etc) and leave that for the developing time. Then rinse, make sure you like the colour, then you can remove the whole cap and give your hair a wash, though strictly speaking this isn't necessary, I like to give it all a good wash and condition.

Never, ever take the cap off until you are happy with the colour.

Its that simple!

The only problem with the kits you paint on is that sometimes they won't lift your hair up to the desired colour so you end up with bright orange highlights. There was someone on here the other day with that problem. Its not the end of the world but it means you have to colour over them, or live with them.

hmmm ok. thanks guys! im not sure if im brave enough! my hair is a medium brown and i just want to lift it a bit- scary!

Ooh that highlight cap sounds really good I'll keep an eye out for that!
My hair has quite warm tones on so like the idea of Pre-lightening then applying an ash type blOnde to tone it down. Thanks :)

Has anyone tried the john frieda spray in lightener which sounds a bit like the old sun in. I was going to buy it but it said for blondes but maybe it might work on brown hair ?

Jenda, I would suggest you buy the Foil Effects Cap from Superdrug or Boots or wherever, keep your receipt, go home and read the booklet that comes with it, and if you are still too nervous, just box it back up and return it.

The book is so detailed you can't go wrong.

My advice would be DON'T DO IT

A friend did one on me a number of years ago and it didn't go light enough, she was sat anxiously with a hairdryer trying to get it to go lighter while it was on but my hair did end up with a ginger tinge to it, even the hairdresser commented that it was "a bit of a funny colour" next time I went to get it done properly.

Could you see a trainee hairdresser or something to get it done more cheaply.

That's the problem with using the "kits" over dyed hair (or even natural hair). I don't think they use 40 volume peroxide (which should be able to lighten even dark brown hair with a little build up to at least a chestnut colour) and they are not close to the head in the same way dye is, or encased in foil in the way foils are (!) and its just a bit hit and miss as to whether you can achieve your desired shade.

The beauty of the foil effects cap is that it doesn't really matter what shade you get the hair up to as long as its light enough to take on a semi permenant colour of your choice - so if you bring it up to "ginger tinge" - it doesn't matter, because you are about to put a semi or permenant colour on top, and its been prelightened. Ideally you'd get it up to light ginger or canary yellow then rinse off and apply your chosen colour.

The foil effects cap is the only one that allows you to do this - I think, anyway, the only other cap kits I've seen are one use, though please correct me if I'm wrong, and the ones you just paint on are simply bleach which is fine if you are a light to mid neutral brown but if you are dark brown, mahogany, with colour build up, etc it can go rather wrong!

ok. i have red and lots of colour build up in my hair and im going to leave it until my best mate has got time to help me, at least then i can blame her! thank you all so much for your help, it has been an awakening :-)

Hi everyone. I'm new to Mumsnet..first time I've messaged! Can anyone advise me on the best home hair highlight kit. I've medium brown hair and want to add a few golden/blonde highlights for the summer. Had this done last time at hairdresser but apart from the fact they charged me a ridiculous amount of money, the highlights turned out more red than blonde. Thanks