A guide to highlights for women over 50, according to hairstylists

Highlighting hair can be fickle—the right type of hue and the right blending technique are equally crucial to getting a seamless look. Add grays into the mix, and a whole other layer of trickiness is piled on.

“The biggest rule is to work with the gray, not against it,” says celebrity hairstylist Dimitris Giannetos. “Gray hair creates beautiful dimension when it's blended thoughtfully.” While you may be tempted to stay away from highlights altogether, Giannetos says it’s about adding softness rather than covering every strand. “I always focus on creating a seamless result that brightens the face rather than trying to completely mask every gray hair,” he explains. “The goal is low-maintenance, healthy-looking color that grows out naturally.”

Look to celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Victoria Beckham, who were both just spotted at Wimbledon in London sporting highlights. Lopez opted for more subtle bronde highlights, while Beckham brought back a somewhat older highlight trend: ombré, featuring dark roots with lighter ends.

Giannetos also just created a highlight masterpiece on Penélope Cruz by expertly placing various blond hues throughout brunette hair to add seamless dimension.

Ahead, three stylist-approved highlighting techniques to show to your colorist at your next salon appointment, whether you’re looking to hide gray hairs or give your hair a subtle upgrade.

Babylights

Giannetos loves utilizing “babylights” to create a natural transition between natural hair color and grays. “Fine, strategically placed highlights around the face and throughout the crown help make gray regrowth much less noticeable than a traditional all-over color,” he says. The stylist demonstrated this on Cruz by putting various blond tones throughout the head while allowing her natural brunette shade to shine through underneath. Since the highlights are superfine and more frequent, they cover grays from every angle—whether you’re wearing your hair in an updo, with a side part, or down and sleek.

The key when coloring any mature hair is keeping the highlights fine, as demonstrated with babylights. This creates a softer, more modern finish, Giannetos explains, adding that “chunky highlights can emphasize contrast and make regrowth appear more obvious.”

Plus, celebrity colorist and founder of Highbrow Hippie, Kadi Lee, says chunky highlights won’t cover grays adequately. “With mature hair, gray never grows in as a solid block; it grows in unevenly, so the highlight needs to mimic that same pattern,” she explains. “I always go by the rule of a ‘soft beginning,’ or hair should whisper at the roots and shout at the ends.” Lee will always keep highlights thin on top (especially to blend in with finer gray strands) and focus thicker highlights on the midshafts to ends, à la Victoria Beckham’s current style.

Gray Blending

The most obvious choice when covering grays with highlights is to use a technique called gray blending, which uses light hues as a transition between grays and your natural color. For good reason, colorists always gravitate toward this method. “Gray blending is a great technique because it helps eliminate unnecessary damage to the hair when it's already in a delicate state,” Lee says. “The goal is for the lightened pieces to blend thoughtfully with the gray, so you can't tell where the color ends and the natural hair begins.” Lee utilizes the balayage method to delicately place highlights, so the grow-out is more natural and soft-looking.

When using gray blending, placement and tone are everything. “Gray shows up first at the part, the temples, and the crown, so that's where I weave in soft pieces to blend the transition rather than covering the whole head evenly,” Lee says.

Emphasize Your Base Tone

Highlighting isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, as colorists mainly take into account your natural hair color. “There is no universal formula for blending gray, because you're always trying to match the highlight to either the natural or color-treated pigment,” Lee adds.

Blond hair color is the easiest hue to blend with gray strands since the two tones are most similar. The key here is to stick with cooler tones, Lee says. Think of blond tones like soft beige, champagne, or creamy, cool-toned blond tones, which are closer to the tone of gray and silver hair.

While not impossible, highlighting mature brunette hair has its own set of challenges. “Because the contrast between the dark pigment and gray is stark, lowlights are just as important as highlights,” Lee explains. Plus, Lee emphasizes the importance of weaving in a few ashy brown tones alongside the lighter pieces: “This gives the gray something to blend into rather than sitting starkly against very dark hair.” If hair is very dark, Lee often will lift the brunette color ever so slightly to narrow the gap between the natural color and the gray coming in.

Don’t go too cool, though. Giannetos likes to add ribbons of caramel, honey, or neutral brunette tones into hair to “add warmth and dimension while softening the appearance of gray.” He also says not to count out extensions, a safer play when highlighting mature hair. To add highlights without overprocessing the hair, you can add in extensions to give you more flexibility to change your color.

FAQs

How Often Should You Get Highlights With Mature Hair?

Although your first instinct may be to color mature hair more often, Lee says to push touch-ups to eight to 12 weeks rather than the typical six weeks in order to keep up hair health. Plus, highlights over single-process color naturally allow for more spaced-out touch-ups. “One of the benefits of highlights is that they grow out much more naturally, so you don't have that obvious line of regrowth,” Giannetos explains.

Meet the Experts:

• Kadi Lee is a celebrity colorist and the founder of haircare brand Highbrow Hippie.
• Dimitris Giannetos is a celebrity hairstylist and colorist.