05 Dec Your best balayage! New technique and post-peroxide haircare

It’s the Holy Grail for a balayage blonde: long-lasting, low-maintenance, expensive-and-natural-looking lightness.

Top London salons have been reinventing freehand hair painting techniques for years to achieve the new kind of balayage blonde: ombre / sombre / tortoiseshell / ecaille / bronde…

But subtle is over in Sydney, and it’s now all about a much bolder blonde but still with the softness achieved by balayage.

Hot salon Hair & Harlow, which just opened a second branch in Sydney, is fusing past with present to help girls with darker hair rock the new blonde in a very modern way.

Their hashtag #hairandharlowblondes has thousands of tags, all photos of sunning cascading champagne hair.

I headed down to try it out for myself, and bubbly blonde hair stylists Ashley and Krystal worked their magic on me for a couple hours one afternoon.

First things first: these girls work fast. Oh my goodness a full-head dye job, cut and blow dry took just over 3 hours. This is unheard of in London. Plus, they were with me the whole time.

Normally what I’m used to in a London salon, you’re passed from shampoo girl to tea and coffee girl to magazine girl to colour girl to cut girl to blow-dry girl. You can literally see six people and go up and down 3 floors in some of the big salons, and stay there up to five hours for the same service.

Ashley, Krystal and I were chit-chatting while they worked so speedily and efficiently and my appointment flew by.

In London normally my bum is numb in the seat half way through and I’m starving by the end!

Not to diss my home city, but comparing the two I’m quite shocked at the speed of service, especially taking into account those Aussie laid back ‘no worries’ vibes I love so much.

Moving on to technique, Ashley literally did old school foils on me. Now, I can’t be sure she sectioned and bleached my hair like traditional highlights – it didn’t quite look that way – but I can be sure she covered most of my hair with foils. Most of it has lightness scattered throughout it and I really like that actually.

Ashley and Kystal did an amazing job of making my hair colour look flawless, natural, not-stripy and slightly graduated.

This must be partly because Ashely pin-pointed my natural root colour and painted it down a little after finishing the highlights to blend them in and for subtle balayage blonde style regrowth (long-lasting, yes!).

Whatever she did was like magic because at the end I was a true Hair & Harlow blonde like the stunners I’d seen on Instagram, and I wear that hashtag with honour.

I got a quick dry trim after my blow dry for extra precision, and picked up an EVO Fabuloso conditioner on my way out. Ashley mixed in my exact toner for long-lasting icy blonde.

It was super interesting to see how Sydney stylists work so differently compared to those in London. It’s like we’re all kind of looking for the same balayage blonde result but taking a very different route there.

One thing’s for sure, the Sydney style is much, much, blonder. And I LOVE IT!

Visit Hair & Harlow for more & to book an appointment.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BcNneWXFXuO/?taken-by=denikirkova

My favourite shampoo for bottle blonde

I’m using Sukin Organics shampoos to clean and nourish my hair post-Hair & Harlow lushness.

You have to be so careful and considerate to your hair after bleaching TF out of it. No sulphate, limited heat styling, lots of conditioning, lots of toning.

Hair & Harlow sells amazing top end products – all sulphate-free and incredible quality – but I’m loving Sukin’s skincare and I also love their shampoos. They’re also sulphate-free and smell amazing.

They’re all-vegan, organic, natural and purse-friendly. No wonder it’s one of Australia’s favourite beauty labels.

Dxox