What's the difference between balayage and ombre hair?
In a recent interview with Marie Claire Magazine, Riawna Capri finally answered the age old question of what the difference between balayage and ombre is! For those of you who do not know who Riawna Capri is, she is currently one of the most influential and sought after celebrity hairstylists with clients such as Julianne Hough, Selena Gomez, Steven Tyler (guys can appreciate an incredible hairstylist, too), Ruby Rose, and Nina Dobrev just to name a few. Read below for the interview that finally clears all of our confusion!
"A few years ago—admittedly at the peak of my Pinterest obsession—I decided I needed ombré hair (#priorities). I showed my then-hairstylist the prettiest, softest ombré hairstyles I could find, and I low-key debated moving to California because, obviously, my new hair would be so damn cool that my New York life would be beneath me. I’ll save you the sob story, but to recap: My hairstylist painted a bold, blonde line across the middle of my head and drenched my ends in bleach. To say I was completely scarred (and forever turned off from ombré) would be an understatement. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who had a terrible experience with ombré, though. Flash forward to today, and the industry’s obsession with all-things ombré has been replaced with a preference for "balayage" hair. And just as I was kicking myself for choosing ombré over balayage that day in the salon, I had an epiphany: The two styles look ~weirdly~ similar. So, to find out the real difference between balayage and ombré hair and save you an awkward salon experience like my own, I enlisted the help of Riawna Capri, celebrity hairstylist and co-owner of L.A. salon, Nine Zero One.
BALAYAGE IS A TECHNIQUE.
“First thing’s first: Balayage is a technique and ombré is a gradient of color,” says Capri, whose client roster includes Selena Gomez, Ruby Rose, and Nina Dobrev. “There’s actually no such thing as a balayage hair color. Balayage is how you achieve ombré.” And it gets even simpler than that: The French word balayage translates to "sweeping," which is the gist of the technique. “When you’re using a balayage technique, you’re literally painting bleach or lightener onto the hair in a sweeping motion,” Capri says.
BALAYAGE DOESN'T REQUIRE FOILS.
Balayage may also sound very to highlights, but there is actually a key difference between the two: "Highlights start at the root and get painted down to the tips, whereas balayage begins at the tips and feathers up to the top," says Capri. "And while balayage is usually painted directly onto the hair, highlights are wrapped in foil. The foil, especially if your sitting under heat, is going to really lighten the hair for a brighter effect." But when you skip foil—as most stylists do with balayage—oxygen eventually oxidizes the bleach, resulting in dried out, not-so-bright color. “It’s a lot quicker and faster to lighten hair without foils, so I feel like hairstylists got excited about balayage. But since you can’t achieve that same lightness without foils, people started using stronger bleach.” This is where Capri’s preferred method of balayage comes into play. “I like to call it foilyage, meaning I put my balayage pieces in foil so I can get them super light.”
But if balayage isn’t actually a hair color (and if people usually mean ombré when they request it), why do so many people confuse it for one? The answer, says Capri, has a lot to do with ombré’s not-so-great reputation. “Five or six years ago, a few celebrities ended up with super-solid blonde at the bottom of their hair, and super-solid dark at the top," she says. But this extreme, contrasting hue isn’t actually ombré, it's dip-dyed hair, which is easy to spot because it's missing that medium, caramel-hued gradient in the middle that blends the whole look together. “Ombré got a bad rap for a minute because people were creating dip-dye effects," she adds. "I feel like it’s a similar case with extensions; when people had bad extensions, everyone thought all extensions were bad.” But obviously, ombré styles can be extremely beautiful. They "just need to have the perfect amount of medium, gradient color in the middle to create a soft, natural-looking flow of dark to medium to light," says Capri.
OMBRE UPKEEP IS IDEAL.
One of the coolest takeaways from my crash-course on ombré and balayage wasn’t just Capri’s explicit definitions of the terms, but the revelation that ombré maintenance is extremely low. “Since the technique doesn’t start from your scalp, you already have roots," she says. "Nine times out of ten, when it’s done right, someone can come into the salon literally a year later and not actually need more color. My favorite inspirations are little kids and surfers’ hair,” Capri adds. “Their ends are so light and the root is so dark, yet it still looks natural, not streaky, and it all blends really well.”
So, now that you can officially rest easy knowing the true difference between balayage and ombré hair—repeat after me: balayage is the technique, and ombré is the color—there’s no better time than this very moment to look through the coolest, most inspo-worthy examples to date. Ahead, our favorite ombré looks to get you hyped for your next hair appointment. Happy coloring!"