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

Did you know?

Your local salon probably has a bounty of tonsorial options to choose from: highlights, lowlights, frosting, streaking, foils, gloss—the list goes on. If it's a trendy lewk you're after, you might consider balayage, a technique for creating highlights or lowlights in a person's hair by painting color freehand, using long, sweeping strokes. (Balayage is a French borrowing that literally translates to "sweeping.") When done properly, balayage results in a more natural look than other traditional methods. The technique was developed in France in the 1970s and quickly made its way to the U.S. While it was fashionable in the 1970s, the technique—and the word that refers to it—faded from use during the 1980s and 1990s, only to be rediscovered in the early 21st century.

Examples of balayage in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Dress up your color with curtain bangs or make the transition more subtle with a balayage technique. —Lisa Desantis, Glamour, 19 Sep. 2024

So far, this year has seen the rise of quiet luxury hair and the subsequent fall of balayage and highlights, which, according to stylists, will likely continue into the cooler seasons. —Bella Cacciatore, Glamour, 9 Aug. 2024

If your daily hair aspirations include a sleek middle part or blowout that shows off your balayage color, your shampoo should support that. —Sharon Brandwein, Southern Living, 8 Aug. 2024

The average cost of balayage highlights — a natural-looking style of coloring that concentrates the dye toward the tips — was $175 in 2022, according to Fash data. —Anna Cooban, CNN, 27 July 2024

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

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