Highlights 2.0, ’90s sun-kissed strands, and antique pearl are the buzzwords to keep in mind when it comes to summer blonde hair ideas this season. As for what you can leave behind? The iced-blonde trend, according to experts.
As anyone who has ever dyed their hair knows, blonde is never just blonde. The shade can take many forms, and right now it’s in a soft-girl era. The vibe for blonde hair colors this season is less surfer girl, more rom-com heroine. And the stark, frosty colors that were so cool in years past are being replaced with more delicate, dreamy, and surprisingly easy-to-wear iterations.
Ahead, these are the summer blonde hair ideas to bring to your next visit to your colorist.
Weekend blonde
Highlights are back, but not as you know them. For the past few seasons, balayage and working with a more natural base have (almost) made highlights redundant. This summer, however, “it’s about a lived-in look with a twist,” says Harriet Muldoon, blonde specialist at Larry King. She’s dubbed this look weekend blonde.
To Muldoon, Margot Robbie in her Wuthering Heights era is the perfect embodiment of this shade. “Weekend blonde is romantic and delicate, and gives off a soft golden glow,” she says, adding that to achieve the look, you should ask your colorist for a combination of high-lift tint and gentle bleach. The beauty of using a high-lift tint in between the foils, she says, is that it lifts the base to a butter-yellow hue, while a gentle bleach with a lower oxidation “won’t take your hair up to a super blonde, but keeps it on the golden side. It’s giving a Sunday-morning lived-in feel, wearing a cashmere luxury tracksuit with a coffee to go.”
Christel Barron-Hough, a colorist specializing in Scandi blonde and founder of Stil Salon in London, also is a fan of this midway blonde shade, which she says sits between warm and cool tones. For her, it moves away from the ’90s Olsen twins grunge era to something that’s more polished.
