Girl…HELL, NO, and the funny thing is, I’ve tried quite a few times, but it turned out terrible EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. You might’ve thought I would’ve learned my lesson after the first attempt, but nope! I just kept coming back for more.
I vividly remember using one of those boxed chunky highlight kits in the mid-’90s with my cousin…who wasn’t really my cousin. If you’re Filipino, you probably already assumed this because when someone is referred to as your “cousin,” you don’t even have to be marginally related to them. As long as your moms or dads knew each other even tangentially, then they were immediately dubbed “cousins.”
But I digress!
This girl (my cousin who wasn’t really my cousin) and I both had jet black hair, and we decided it was a good idea to use a highlighting boxed kit made for blondes (yes, you read that correctly). One of us had heard from a friend of a friend that if you wanted black hair to lighten, you had to use what the blonde gals used.
The kit came with a plastic cap, which you placed on top of your hair. It had dots on it, and you’d pull chunks of hair through the dots using something that looked like a crochet needle… All veeeeeeeery scientific, as you can tell. LOL!
I just remember sitting there in her bathroom with that crackly cap on my head and the pieces of hair jutting through it and thinking that my mane was going to look bomb. 😄
I’m pretty sure we end up with Oomopa Loompa orange strands and it looked 100% terrible, but at the time I thought it was the sh*t.
So teenage me would’ve answered this question, “Yeah, I’ve done my highlights, and they were totally successful!”
But me now is like, “Um, no. Because, girl, your hair was straight-up orange! But I forgive you because you didn’t know any better.” HAHAHA!
How about you. Have you ever successfully done your own hair highlights at home?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Rachel says
October 21st, 2020 at 8:40 amNope! I haven’t had any success with any at home coloring. In college some friends and I bleached my hair from light brown to blonde and it was not cute! Luckily I had a cousin (a real cousin lol) who was going through hair school and was able to fix it. I learned pretty quick that the mess and measly success rate of at home color is not worth it! I’d rather try and save up and go to the salon a couple times a year.
Karen says
October 21st, 2020 at 9:34 amLOL at “a real cousin.” There were few years there when I was seriously confused about whom I was actually related to.
Thank goodness you had someone around who knew how to fix it! I think my hair was orange for a good year and a half.
Daphne B says
October 21st, 2020 at 9:01 amOh Karen, that is hilarious! I hope you took pictures. I tried one time to do the highlight kit that has the little finger comb that you slip over your index finger and you are supposed to run it through your hair where you want to place the highlights. It seemed easy and foolproof. It was so not! It was an absolute mess, the highlight cream was messy as heck, and it did not stick to the finger comb and went everywhere. I stopped right away, but not before a big clump landed right next to my face, so I had a big bleached spot in front until it faded and grew out. Now I know why people say not to attempt your own highlights! Do not try this at home!
Karen says
October 21st, 2020 at 9:31 amSee, this is why I’m glad social media didn’t exist back then! Too many terrible beauty decisions!
Kim says
October 21st, 2020 at 9:55 amYes! And don’t feel bad about your crochet kit – there are still old school stylists who highlight with a cap (the same way). I’ve never used one but have had success with foiling. You can either buy the official foil or just cut squares out of tin foil. I’d seen my hair done so many times that way over the years that I didn’t have any problems replicating at home. Of course, pro bleach products are more accessible for home users now, vs our jr high/high school days. I’ve never used a drug store/boxed kit but I’m sure the quality of those has really improved, too. And it’s been years since I’ve highlighted or low-lighted. With so much gray at my roots, the upkeep would be ridiculous. 🙂
Suzanne C says
October 21st, 2020 at 12:23 pmI haven’t done highlights, but I color my hair at home on the regular. Madison Reed, y’all!! Absolutely the MVP of my quarantine year. Because I don’t have gorgeous streaks of silver in my dark mane like ~a certain beauty blogger I know~. The color is slowly draining out of my hair and it’s turning greige. That is every bit as charming as it sounds. 😣😥
Karen says
October 21st, 2020 at 12:49 pmMadison Reed has a freestanding store in a mall nearby! I’ve never been in because it opened after I decided to stop coloring my hair, I know a lot of people love their stuff.
Tatiana says
October 21st, 2020 at 1:22 pmOh man, I remember those caps with the holes and the crochet hooks. But no I’ve never tried highlighting my hair. Coloring at home, by myself created more than enough mess in the house.
So glad I’ve let my hair go gray.
Marcia says
October 21st, 2020 at 2:33 pmI have never highlighted my hair at home, but I have colored it one color. That is easy and I found a color that matches my natural hair color. I was tempted to highlight my hair at home if I got ambitious enough, but after reading your post, I think I’ll stick to the salon. LOL.
Efra says
October 21st, 2020 at 4:34 pmLet me tell you how has been bleaching and dyeing at home for us: a roller coaster. I think that the possibility of getting it wrong is really high unless you know the basics really well.
In our case, dyeing my hair was easy, but with Alisson’s we had a lot of problems with unevenness that I couldn’t really solve until she put demipermanent dye. And for me when I put a darker color on my hair I ended up with an unexpected color.
So now I still say that if you want to experiment by yourself do it, but take in mind it can go wrong way too easy. So be prepared to have a plan b or cut your hair. And if you select doing it at a salon always check other works the stylist has done, because you can also get not so great results if the person isn’t good at it.
Also, never use a box kit, those things should be in hell, go and buy all products in a specialized store.
Michele DiCola says
October 22nd, 2020 at 6:32 amBack in the day we “ frosted “ our hair w one of those caps !
It came out ok
Jules says
October 22nd, 2020 at 9:45 amNope! I’ve self-dyed my hair solid colours (red, pink, purple, blue, black)… but I refuse to EVER do highlights on my own. You see, tt all stems back to one lovely evening and my wanting red highlights. My mother decided that instead of paying for a salon to do it, we’d do it at home with one of those cap/crochet hook deals.
Yeah, NO.
I wound up rushing back to the drugstore in tears to try to find something to remove it, as my “highlights” were this horrific tiger stripe mess of a few millimeters of brown, then a few millimeters of bleach blond, then cardinal red blocky chunks (all due to being unable to reach the root area because of the cap).
I never ever want to go through that again.
Rachel says
October 24th, 2020 at 11:31 amIs it highlighting when you’re putting turquoise “highlights” into pillarbox red hair? Because I’ve done that with the old crochet hook and cap method and it looked great and punk rock and exactly what I wanted.
It probably helped that my hair had already been bleached from almost black to pale yellow so that it’d be the red colour, so there was minimal bleaching needed for the bits I ended up doing turquoise and the fact that you can’t really get right down to the roots wasn’t a problem because my roots were my dark hair growing, so even all over.
I feel like it’s the kind of thing you need to realise that if it goes wrong, the only person you can blame is yourself (which is why I do my hair bleaching/dyeing myself tbh – don’t want to blame someone else if it’s not what I wanted) and then if it doesn’t turn out right you just have to wear it like it was intentional (which maybe only works if you’re going for the unnatural look?)
Cathy says
December 14th, 2020 at 4:26 pmI’ve tried highlighting myself using a Blond Brilliance kit from Sally’s. My hair is jet black, like yours, and it worked but I had to tone it, as it was yellowish, so I used a semi-permanent dye to darken/tone it. I tried to balayage with foils. There’s a ton of DIY highlighting videos for dark hair. I’m thinking about trying highlighting again, using a Hi-Lift color (either soft brown or auburn, nothing drastic) so I wouldn’t have to tone, but my family’s against it, but I am bored with my hair. Plan B is always to just buy a box of black dye to cover up the mess.