How To Highlight Hair at Home: DIY Highlights

There's probably only one person we'd trust to create a legit tutorial on how to highlight hair at home: Kristin Ess, the stylist and colorist behind Lauren Conrad and Lucy Hale's always-perfect hair. If you want to know the secrets behind successfully pulling off DIY highlights without looking like a Sun-In victim, Ess has a few key tips that will safeguard your hair should you attempt to highlight it yourself. Here, Ess' best advice.

1. Style Your Hair As You Normally Would

The first important thing Ess says to do is to make sure you do your highlights on styled hair. This ensures that you can "see where the lighter pieces should fall with the way [you] normally wear it," she says. Ess also recommends making sure that the sectioned-off pieces you're going to highlight are no bigger than a shoelace.

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2. Find a Bleach Kit

Find a bleach kit like the Flash Lightening 30 Volume Bleach Kit (the kit costs $10.49, which is a lot less than the average cost of highlights in a salon). Whatever kit you choose, practice safety first by doing an allergy test to make sure you're not allergic to the product (each box will have its own instructions on how to do an allergy test). And, of course, always wear gloves and keep the bleach away from your skin and eyes at all times.

3. Gather Your Brushes

In addition to the bleach brush that will come in your kit, you'll also need a spooley brush (that brush you use to put on mascara and brow gel). Ess says it's important to have two brushes: one to bleach and one to blend. The spooley will help blend in the color as you use bleach. As a professional or a non-professional, you want to make sure that you get a soft line and not a solid line where the bleach stops and another color begins. "There are a lot of ways for a hairstylist to do this, but not anything I was willing to teach the general public because it takes training," says Ess. "The safest way for you to achieve this on your own at home is to use a small, densely bristled brush of some sort. If you don't have a spooley handy, you can alternatively use an old toothbrush that you're never going to use again."

Start your highlights by using the blending brush that comes with the dye kit to apply the bleach.

Then, follow up with the spooley to blend in the bleach and create soft lines.

4. Only Apply Dye From the Middle of a Strand to the Bottom

Another key to DIY highlights is knowing when to stop applying the dye. Ess stresses the importance of applying the dye from the middle of hair shaft down to the ends, and absolutely no higher than that, or else you'll run into major safety problems. "Anything higher than that could end up on your skin, or on other hair you don't want to get bleach on, like your brows," says Ess. "I feel like almost anyone can do a controlled section, but I truly feel that it takes a professional colorist to go above that. And if your hair is shorter than a lob, you should go in to see a professional. Once you start getting up toward the root you can really mess up by doing it yourself."

5. Be Careful and Use Common Sense

Above all, Ess says to make sure you're using common sense. "I think the most important thing is to use good judgment. Don't do anything that seems confusing or difficult," she says. "Bleach is no joke, and you don't want to end up spending hundreds of dollars for a professional to fix it." Especially if this is your first go at DIY highlights, use the philosophy "less is more." You can always build up to more highlights later.

For more highlighting tips from Ess, head over to The Beauty Department where she walks you through her at-home highlighting routine.

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