Highlights: how long they really last and how often they need touching up

Hair · 28 August 2026 · by María José Esteve

The question isn't how long they last, because the colour doesn't fade: it grows. What decides how often you come back isn't fashion, it's the gap between your roots and whatever you've had done on top.

Highlights don't fade: they grow out

It's the basic confusion and it's worth clearing up before anything else. A highlight is lightened hair, and lightened hair stays that way forever: it doesn't wash out and it doesn't fall out. What happens over the months is that your own colour grows in on top, at roughly a centimetre a month.

So “how long they last” is really two different questions, and they're fixed in different ways. One is when the roots start to show, which is a matter of technique. The other is when the blonde loses its tone and turns yellow or orange, which is a matter of tone and sorts itself out in half an hour.

What decides how often you come back is the contrast, not the trend

If your base is dark brown and you go for a cool blonde, the jump is huge and the roots show within a few weeks. If you stay two or three tones above your own, you can go half a year without anyone noticing anything. Same client, same hair: it's the contrast that changes.

That's why, when someone comes in asking for a technique by name because they've seen it on Instagram, the first thing we ask isn't the colour. It's how often you can come in. With that answer and your base in front of us we already know what makes sense to suggest and what will only give you grief.

And there's a part that isn't decided by looking at the hair, but at the face: where we place the light. The same highlights can lift or dull a face depending on how high they start and where they fall, and that depends on your face shape and your skin tone. It's the difference between a pretty colour and a colour that suits you.

Each technique calls for a different rhythm

• Balayage. It's lightened by hand and the roots are left blurred, with no cut-off line. As there's no border to mark, the growing-out doesn't show: it comfortably lasts three or four months, and stretching it, longer. It's the option for anyone who doesn't want to live tied to the salon.
• Babylights. Very fine highlights set close together that don't change the colour, they add light. Being so subtle they don't leave a hard root line either, and they usually need going over every three or four months.
• Foil highlights, from the root. They lighten more and lift faster, but they leave a clean line where the work ends. That line shows, and that's why the touch-up goes every six to eight weeks.
• Grey coverage. Here it's the grey that rules, not the highlights: as soon as the white shows it's noticeable. The usual is every three or four weeks, and it's exactly the case where we sometimes suggest adding light rather than colouring the lot, so the roots stop being a countdown.

The timings are a rough guide and everything shifts them: how fast your hair grows, how much white you have and how much seeing it bothers you. Some clients are delighted with a couple of centimetres of root and others can't stand it after three weeks.

Yellow and orange are another thing, and they're fixed in half an hour

When hair is lightened you take pigment out of it, and under the blonde there's always a warm undertone waiting. The toner neutralises it on the day of the appointment, but that tone washes out. That's why two months go by and the same hair that came out ash is turning golden.

It's sped up by the sun, chlorine from the pool, very hard water, straighteners on full blast and shampoos that strip too much. There you can do quite a bit at home: wash with lukewarm water, a shampoo suited to lightened hair and heat protection before the straighteners.

And if even so it looks dull, the answer isn't to redo the highlights. It's a toner: half an hour, and the hair's back to where it should be. It happens a lot that a client books in for highlights and leaves with a toner, spending a fraction of what she came to spend, because what had gone dull was the tone and not the highlight. A colour gloss does something similar: it tones and adds shine without touching the base.

What we'll ask you before we touch anything

What you've done to your hair up to now —a henna or a home dye from months ago can react in odd ways with the bleach and we need to know beforehand—, how your ends are, how much white you have and, again, how often you can come.

That's where the proposal comes from, and every now and then the proposal is to wait. If your hair isn't up to lightening it two more shades, we say so: we'd rather you left with a less spectacular colour and all your hair, than do today what you've asked for and see you in three months cutting it off.