Highlighting has been wildly transformed from the former limits with caps and foiling, with spectacular results. Here are a couple of the products of some ingenious thinking, to create amazing luxe looks, hot off the presses. Get yours before they saturate the market–and they will!

Mermaid Hair Painting’s Next Go-To: Fluid Hair Painting
This first innovative trend is the brainchild of pioneer hairstylist hailing from Grand Rapids, Michigan KL Christoffersen. For clients at his Cheeky Strut salon, he has moved way beyond any box and onto the table, giving them a direct route to having dazzling mermaid hair effects. What it is, basically, is a technique for painting the hair, Christoffersen dubbed as fluid hair painting, and it’s performed by hand-painting individual strands of the hair that are spread out across a large table. And while it may sound like it would involve some awkward contortions–nothing could be further from the truth, as the client is super-comfortable during the process, being chill in a semi-reclining position (similar to being at the shampoo station,) with a suitably tall table behind them upon which their tresses are positioned in a fully fanned outspread, similar to a peacock’s tail.

  • Seriously Unique Control and Results: Fluid hair painting takes balayage to an entirely new level, as it employs a hair painting technique that’s similar to what’s used for balayage, and couldn’t be further from anything conventional. With the hair precisely fanned out, the colorist can see every strand, and the progression of color from the roots to the tips. This technique allows for unprecedented control over color appointment exactly where you want it, and produces a beautifully soft fluid color
  • Your Color, Your Way: There are no restrictions on the quantity or shades of color you put in your hair, and it’s up to you whether to create vividly bold effects or soft, subtle glowing highlights–exactly where you want them.
  • Not a DIY: Leave this one to the pros, because there’s a lot more to fluid hair painting than might appear, and the results are permanent, or semi-permanent. The technique has begun to take on steam, having already been spotted in Sweden. Once word of fluid hair painting gets out, the salons offering this unique service will be the ones everyone will be flocking to.

Glass Color: Glass Hair Painting
Got glass?  More precisely, does your hair stylist know how to create the newest zing for new highlighting amazement, by using a sheet of glass? Didn’t think so–at least not yet, but once this technique gets out, it will quickly become a standard in salons everywhere, as based on sheer demand. This intriguing technique comes by way of NYC and the mind of pro colorist Chiala Marvici, who shares that the technique of Hand Pressed Color literally came to her in a dream (yes, the REM-sleep kind of dream) where she “saw multiple layers of patterns and sheets of color, one in front of the other.”

  • Huh? This process moves away from the use of foils or even painting apps for color distribution. Instead, it’s all about using a sheet of glass to produce multidimensional color that gives hair an unprecedented shimmery radiance and glow. You want shine? It’s here, or at least about to be here, given a little time for this process to spread. By first laying out the colors exactly where they’ll give the most brilliance onto a sheet of glass, Marvici has revealed the new level of control for color placement using this slick glass-to-hair
  • The Plus: Because a number of different shades of hair color are first applied (in the exact volume desired) onto a custom-cut six-inch sheet of plexiglass, multi-dimensional radiance is adeptly configured and ensured before ever hitting the strand, where it’s harder to control color placement. With plexiglass, there’s no worry about inadvertent process hazards, and the edges are safe and smooth.
  • The Way: The colorist begins by thoughtfully appropriating various shapes and sizes of different colors onto the glass, in blobs and squiggles. (Extent of vivid colors or blurring depends on the number of times the color is pressed.) When the stylist is satisfied with the color layout on the glass, she’ll take the section of hair and lay it flat, right on top of the colors on the glass. Next, taking a putty knife, she’ll run it down along the surface, which forces the hair into the color (and the color into the hair!) The more times this step is performed, the more blurred the effects will be for that section. The same process intensity is idea here, among all the strands. Once all color has been applied, it should be left to process for a minimum of 30 minutes.
  • Coming Soon, to a Salon Near You: Marvici has been taking this technique to educate color pros across the country, so it may be a little while before it reaches every area, but it’s expected to take on as a hot trend ahead of us, as a highly progressive highlighting must-have technique.