Lived-In vs Low-Maintenance: Why Balayage Looks More Natural, Like the Hair You Had as a Kid

"Lived-in color" is about enhancing your natural beauty, not fighting against it.

My definition: hair color designed to grow out gracefully, look natural, and require less upkeep.

Blonde balayage

When I think about anything "lived-in", I'm reminded of things that have softened into comfort and personality over time. Things like a cozy living room with a slightly worn armchair and a throw blanket; or your favorite clothing item like your perfectly broken-in jeans. These things are never brand-new perfect. They're a little weathered and shaped by real life—and more beautiful because of it.

Buying something that is pre-washed, distressed, or (in the case of highlights) teased-to-blend & shadow-rooted is a convenience. For some, immediate gratification is a way of life, and we just don't want to wait for a lived-in quality to reveal itself. But for hair that is colored to look "lived-in", what are the factors that make it believable, effortless, and naturally dimensional rather than like salon-engineered highlights?

I was riding the bus on my way to work the other day, and a young girl with blonde hair and highlights got on a few stops after mine and sat in front of me. I always notice people's hair first. I guess it's a habit to automatically think about how I would do everyone's color if they were to sit in my chair. Her highlights were pretty with bright pops of blonde toward the ends, and there was much more of her natural color up top. By any measure, most people would reasonably pay a lot of money for this color. It was flattering and looked low-maintenance. But was it "lived-in" looking? Not really by my definition. Here's the photo of the highlight placement I noticed so we can dive in to what makes this type of highlight a different look than true balayage.

Low-maintenance blonde highlight with modern foiling techniques

The highlights shown here are obviously going to grow out very easily, no doubt about it. They're very finely woven around the top of the head so that there aren't any stripes or chunks of color. The detail that I want you to notice from now on is the actual tone and lightness of the individual hairs from top to bottom. In this case, the blend comes from the fineness of the weave or perhaps from natural hairs teased out of the way before highlighting. There's less hair that is light on the top of her head than there is on the bottom, but the individual hairs are highlighted just as light everywhere. What this gives you is an effect that looks like a scattered sprinkling of color, kind of like tinsel hair. And I just want to be clear: I don't think this looks bad. It just doesn't look natural or lived-in.

Natural hair that highlights on its own, the very definition of "lived-in highlights," has larger clusters of highlighting that blend out from the scalp through changes in tone AND lightness. Take a look at these pictures of children's highlights.

There's a subtle gradient that makes up the highlight. It blends and becomes part of the natural color, not because it's finely woven into the root hair by hair, but because the base color growing out of the scalp transitions into a lighter and brighter color along the length of the hair. Now obviously, children's hair is the ultimate lived-in color, and for me it's that never-quite-attainable goal when highlighting adults. The closest I've been able to get is with balayage, and that's due to the application, placement and product.

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With balayage, larger sections of hair are meant to be highlighted non-uniformly instead of with perfect lines and 100% saturation. These sections will typically vary in width and depth and mirror a person's subtle growth patterns or texture changes. Along each painted section, the bleach will be applied with a gradient of saturation that actually lightens that way instead of to a perfect "even lift."

Balayage application showing light saturation transitioning to full saturation

The images above show three interpretations of lived-in color on a blonde, brunette, and red. The pictures below show a balayage application for a blonde and the final color. While there isn't a strong highlight at the root area, there is enough of a transition to allow for a 3-6 month growout. The highlights are distributed across the hair, but they're not equally spaced. Instead of placing the color in rigid sections, it's swept onto the hair in a way that the sunlight would naturally catch. Cowlicks and jumps in the hair are colored together. Toward the ends, the color lightens softly. The overall effect is more fluid and painterly.

If there is one major distinction between "low-maintenance hair" and "lived-in" it's efficiency versus effortlessness. Low-maintenance is about time saved. Lived-in color is about authenticity. We all want to save time in our lives. For me though, balayage is the true winner when it comes to having your color look most authentically lived-in from the very beginning, and it still is low-maintenance in terms of having it look great for longer. For anyone that wants their hair to look like it just belongs to them, I recommend embracing the depth of your natural color and highlighting it tonally in a way that enhances what you already have. For balayage to look its best, it won't cover your natural color. It will amplify it into a natural, lived-in style.

If you'd like to schedule a consultation for your next balayage service in Chicago, you can book online here. As always, message me or leave a comment with any questions you have about lived-in highlights or haircolor in general.