How to do your own highlights at home

You know what they say. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and for many of us that means taking our hair into our own hands and adding a fresh colour to our locks.Before you get started, you need to know how to choose the right colour. If you have "virgin" hair and you want a simple and subtle shift, hair stylist Aaron O'Bryan recommends using a lighter brown at-home colour to highlight. If you're a blonde and touching up your roots, a simple drugstore-bought powder lightener and peroxide developer will do the trick. Most drugstore retailers also have lightening kits that will get you by until your next trip to the salon.If you're not quite ready to take matters into your own hands, there are some more natural methods to dye your hair. Lemon naturally lightens hair in the sun. Just mix 50/50 lemon and distilled water and apply to your strands all over. You can also use apple cider vinegar. Mix it 50/50 with distilled water, put it in a spray bottle and spritz the hair.Still feeling confident you can handle your highlights? Keep reading!

WHAT YOU NEED:

• A tail comb (available at most dollar stores)
• Foil, to cut into strips
• A bowl
• A brush
• Lightening product
• Peroxide
• Purple shampoo

WHAT YOU DO:

The main thing to realize is that this is something you will just be doing to get you by, so you'll only need to take care of your top section.

1. Section the top of the hair on either side of your part from the front of your head to just past your crown.
2. Take your foil and wrap the end of it around the base of your tail comb.
3. Start at the front and work your way to the back to have a brighter look around the face.
4. Take 1mm slices; the closer the slices, the blonder you'll be. To have it more natural space out your highlights.
5. Place the foil and comb at the base of your hair and lay the strands tightly on the foil.
6. Take your lightener and place 1/2cm away from the root as lightener swells, and you don't want lightener to blotch onto the scalp.
7. Move product only on the roots of already lightened hair to prevent breakage, unless your hair is virgin. Then you can bring to the ends
8. If you're only doing a blonde root touch up, put conditioner on the rest of the ends as a treatment to protect your hair.
9. Fold the foil in half bringing it up to the root area to meet each end of the foils together, and press to stick
10. Once you have repeated this throughout your top section, leave to develop for 10 minutes
11. When your 10 minutes are up, check the first highlight to see how it lifted. If it needs more time and needs to be blonder, leave it and check every three minutes to prevent breakage.
12. Once developed, shampoo with purple shampoo for a cleaner blonde. Don't forget to condition!