‘Expensive looking highlights’

[WineNoMore20]

I’ve seen this expression In a number of places- on here, In books. So I’m interested to know what it means. I’m sure if I went into a salon and enquired, they would be confused, as price is so relative. So what do people mean when they say someone has ‘ expensive looking highlights’? What are the alternatives/ cheap looking highlights?

I take it to mean competently done and vaguely natural, not stripy like this-

The alternative is a cheapy box dye with single colour that shows roots in a short space of time.

Highlighted hair isn't cheap to maintain. I have a home hairdresser so I only spend £70 a time and stretch to 8 weeks but that's £420 per year. At £130 (what I paid in a salon) and every 6 weeks it's over £1,100 a year.

@EyebrowChallenge yes but that could still have cost a lot. I packed in the expensive hairdresser after they cut my hair unevenly. I met my home stylist as she originally worked for another salon who had to correct an (expensive) colour job gone wrong. I stuck with her when she went mobile as in my long experience of over blonding and stylists not listening to me at multiple salons I know a good colourist and competent stylist is hard to find.

You avoid looking like the picture above, not thick stripes like that but subtle and blended in highlights. I have blonde and then a slightly darker blonde to hopefully look more natural. And I get mine done every 8 weeks.

I can see how you might end up getting charged a lot for bad highlights. I still don’t think you could describe them as “expensive looking” - they look like my hair did when I used to do my own as a teenager with a cap and hook 😂

I would say they are ones that have the right tone for your skin colour initially. Obviously the amount of contrast is a personal choice. The straight hair is a more natural look whereas the wavy is a more obvious fashion choice. Regardless the technique is what is important too. No Ginger Spice looks. The pic given up above shows bad technique.

With they expensive highlights they use around 3 different shades

I see the difference- the stripy look takes me back to the highlighting cap of my teens 😂.
Im taking from this that what people mean when they say this is very well done .