The Babylight Hair Trend Explained

From balayage to ombré to lowlights, the hair style world goes through a lot of trends. In the last several years, many of these trends have strived to make hair-coloring look more natural, subtle, and nuanced and new trends appear all the time. But there is one such style technique you may not have heard of: babylights. It may sound like a new children’s cartoon, but babylights are actually a hair-color style that has been around for a few years now. Just what are babylights and who are they for?

Babylights is really just a cute term for very subtle highlights. Adding babylights to hair is supposed to mimic the way children’s hair is naturally lighter at the crown and near the tips than at the root or mid-length. The process involved foil-wrapping very small sections of hair and lightening them a few shades above the rest of the hair, preferably a natural color that will be understated but effective. But if this technique is so subtle, what is the point?

The goal of adding babylights is not to create a drastic change but to add depth to hair. This style is especially geared toward people with thin or very fine hair because the placement of the highlights mimics natural shadows and highlights, making the hair look fuller more voluminous.  This technique also might serve as a gentle step into the hair-color world for people who have never died their hair; the highlights are subtle and targeted enough that the process is less damaging than dying your whole head of hair.