balayage

noun

ba·​lay·​age ˈbä-lē-ˌäzh 

variants or less commonly Balayage

: a technique for creating highlights or lowlights in a person's hair in which the colorist paints freehand using long, sweeping strokes

Cilione is well versed in … balayage, a technique that allows the colorist to get very close to the root so that the growing-out phase is less obvious.

—Amy Astley

also : the highlights or lowlights produced by this technique

No matter what your hair color, request hand-painted highlights and lowlights, called balayage. These accents can fake dimension and shine, the hallmarks of thick, healthy hair.

—Jessica Chia

Armed with robust confidence and, often, a bank account to match, they work out, practice … yoga poses, paint balayage streaks into their hair, shop and dress with an undiminished purpose and pride.

—Ruth La Ferla

Examples of balayage in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Freshen up a classic mid-length brunette base with golden face-framing balayage. —Kaitlyn Yarborough, Southern Living, 22 Apr. 2024

Ask for subtle balayage that focuses around the face and on the ends. —Kaitlyn Yarborough, Southern Living, 7 Mar. 2024

Services offered at the stylists of Sola Studio Salons include haircut, style, and color, balayage, nail services and skincare. —Jillian Mueller, Charlotte Observer, 31 Jan. 2024

The base is a deepest-dark shade of cocoa brown, while the balayage comes off a warmer shade of smoky brown. —Kaitlyn Yarborough, Southern Living, 7 Mar. 2024

This simple lob by stylist Jaye Edwards with a few face-framing layers is turned all the way up with an ombré balayage hair color job that adds so much movement. —Mary Shannon Wells, Southern Living, 26 Jan. 2024

Selena Gomez has started the new year by forgoing her blonde, balayage highlights in favor of a new look. —María Quiles, Vogue, 13 Jan. 2024

But with techniques like balayage becoming more and more popular in hair color trends, brunettes are now able to have just as much fun with color. —Mary Shannon Wells, Southern Living, 13 Dec. 2023

Now gray-friendly hairstyles are all the rage: See the TikTok-trending skunk stripe and the gray-blending balayage craze. —Danielle Sinay, Glamour, 22 Aug. 2022

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from French, literally, "sweeping," from balayer "to sweep, clean by sweeping" (going back to Old French balaier, derivative of balain, balai "bundle of broom plants, broom for cleaning") + -age -age; balain, balai, going back to *balatno-, metathesized form of Celtic *banatlo- "broom plant" (whence Welsh banadl, banal, Old Cornish banathel [glossing Latin genesta], Middle Breton balazn, Breton banal, balan), of uncertain origin

Note: Though the Celtic provenance of balai is unquestionable, the details are problematic. An early view was that the word was borrowed into French (and into Occitan from French) from Breton, some of whose dialects show the metathesized form. To this it has been objected that in a broad stretch of the Gallo-Romance speech area, variants of balai are used both for a broom and the broom plant. It would not be too surprising if the name of the implement was borrowed, considering that Bretons were apparently well-known outside Brittany as broom-makers, but borrowing the Breton word for the name of a plant common in many areas of France would have been improbable. More likely the word was taken into French from Gaulish, but the phonetic details are unclear. It has been suggested that the metathesis (from *banatlo- to *balatno-) was influenced by the unrelated Old French verb baloier "to sway back and forth, go here and there," though again it seems unlikely that the form would be extended from the implement to the plant. The further origins of Celtic *banatlo- within Indo-European are uncertain, though the termination *-tlo- appears to be the Indo-European instrumental suffix of the same form—note, however, that in Celtic the etymon is solely the name of a plant.

First Known Use

1972, in the meaning defined above