What is Lived-In Color? Orlando’s Hottest Hair Trend Explained

You may have noticed, if you have spent any time browsing Instagram or Pinterest in the past month or so, that there is a certain type of hair that makes you stop scrolling. It doesn’t look like something that was just done or is perfectly uniform. Rather, it looks like it has texture, subtle highlights, and that the wearer was born with gorgeous hair that is naturally that way. That’s because it’s called lived-in color. And if you are in Orlando, you may have seen it all over town – at shops in Winter Park, sitting on the patio of restaurants on the shores of Dr. Phillips.

Lived-in color is about more than a passing internet craze. It’s a hair coloring philosophy that is all about the idea that your hair color ought to play well with your life and not constantly require expensive, time-consuming services. It is one of the hottest looks requested at Orlando hair salons right now and is appealing to clients who are sick of spending time on their hair and looking for a style that grows out naturally, not oddly. Whether you’re new to hair color or an existing highlights client, this article will help you explore all the aspects of this unique look – what it is, how it compares to balayage, how it’s applied, and why it lasts so much longer than a standard coloring session.

What Is Lived-In Color

Lived-in color is a method of hair coloring that’s intended to mimic the natural, progressive lightening and growth of hair. Consider the effect of a summer of soaking up the sun outside – darker and more intense at the roots, and lighter and more delicate at the mid-lengths and ends. That imperfect, slightly random, naturally occurring gradient is precisely what lived-in color is trying to intentionally create, whether it’s actually the middle of summer or fall, or whether you’ve spent a lot of time on the beach.

As the name implies, the whole idea behind the trend is to try to make your hair look like it’s been “lived in”. The goal of lived-in color is to look like you have simply been doing the normal things that you normally do in your day-to-day life – going to work, having a good time, taking trips, attending the farmers market on your weekends or visiting one of Orlando’s beautiful parks – and your hair has simply responded to all of that, naturally and organically, in the very best way possible. There’s nothing harsh or overly treated about it. It is natural, and that’s where its beauty comes from.

What sets lived-in color apart from other types of color is the emphasis on organic progression of tones, rather than contrast or distinct breaks in the color. Conventional coloring approaches focus on precision – and the sharp edges of color that look so chic when you leave the salon, but can look harsh and unflattering as the color grows out. Lived-in color does just the opposite. The colors meld seamlessly together and into the hair – creating a 3-dimensional, dynamic hair that is infused with color from the inside and shines with a luminosity that photographs like a dream. It photographs well. It can be beautiful when freshly blow-dried for a night out in Orlando’s city center, and it can be pretty and easy on a Sunday morning with a little dry shampoo and minimal styling.

Who It’s For: All Hair Types and Natural Colors

Perhaps the most exciting thing about lived-in color is that it is a universal approach to hair color. Contrary to some highly technical techniques that work best with certain hair types or certain natural hair base colors, lived-in color can be beautifully and naturally adapted for any client, regardless of hair or skin type.

• Fine and straight hair gets the visual appearance of volume and thickness
• Coarse, curly, and coily hair gets gorgeous definition that accentuates and enhances the natural shape of curls in a way that uniform, single-process color just can’t do
• Wavy hair is probably the best match for the lived-in look, as the blended, diffuse tones work with the organic “roll” of waves and make them look more deliberate, pronounced, and dynamic

Base color is also supremely forgiving:

• Brunettes can have soft caramel and honey highlights and tones layered into a rich chocolate brown or espresso base
• Blondes can enjoy tonally blended, lighter, and shinier hair without over-processing their tresses
• Redheads can lighten or darken their strawberry and copper tones to enhance them with tones that look natural and worn-in versus unnaturally vibrant and forced
• Those with dark or black hair can enjoy the experience of lived-in color with lighter tones and carefully applied highlights to give the illusion of multiple tones and depth, without unnatural contrasts and extremes

The take-home message is this: if you have hair, you should be able to find a lovely shade of lived-in color. Your stylist will work with all of the specifics of the approach (the shade, the placement, the mix of techniques) to complement your hair type, texture, base, and personal taste.

What’s the Difference Between Lived-In Color and Balayage

This is a common question in Orlando salons these days, and it’s not surprising. You’ll see these two terms used together so frequently – on salon menus, Instagram hashtags, Pinterest, and beauty blogs – that it’s easy to see why they are confused. But they are not, and this will help you communicate more effectively with your stylist at the consultation.

One of the techniques is balayage. It is a French word, based on the verb to sweep, and it is used to refer to a very particular technique of applying some color or lightener to the hair. Instead of foils or even saturating the entire section of hair with a root-to-tip application of a lightening product, a balayage colorist makes the application with a freehand/sweeping movement onto the surface of chosen areas of hair. This style focuses the product more on the mid-lengths and ends, as well as leaving the root area nearer to the natural base color. The outcome is naturally graduated, sun-kissed color, which is lightened and softened naturally at the ends of the hair.

The lived-in color, in its turn, is a style, a particular visual impression, and an overall philosophy of hair color conduct and a natural behavior as it gets older and older. Balayage can most certainly be a part of achieving that look. But it may also include root smudging, root melting, classical foil highlights, toning glosses, or (most frequently) a clever and considered combination of a few of these methods used jointly based on the hair, objectives, and lifestyle of the individual client.

An example analogy: Balayage is a single brush from a professional colorist’s toolkit. Lived in color is the color that they make with whichever brushes, strokes, and pigments they feel are most appropriate to the overall vision of that specific client on that specific day.

This difference can be put to practical use in your salon appointment. When you are specific about balayage, you could walk away with gorgeous freehand-painted highlights, but without the smoothly blended, shadow-root zone that is the hallmark of the complete lived-in color effect. Requesting lived-in color expresses your full aesthetic desire and provides your stylist with the artistic freedom to employ all the available methods to make it accurate, completely unified, and beautiful to your particular hair.

What is the Application of Lived-In Color

The most prominent and significant difference in the application process of lived-in color as opposed to a traditional coloring appointment is the application process itself. Instead of using just one standardized technique over the entire head, a live-in color service is a multi-step process with various techniques being applied carefully in various areas of the hair, depending on the specific requirements of the area.

Root smudging, which is also referred to as root melting, is the most characteristic and distinctive feature of the lived-in color application. This is the particular method which produces the gorgeous shadow-root effect, and the smoothly blended regrowth area which imparts to the lived-in color its characteristic look and its remarkable permanence between the hairdressing-room sessions.

Root smudging is done by smearing a colored formula of color, usually of a shade chosen to be close to or to harmonize with the natural base shade of the client, directly at the root area, once the lightening has been accomplished through the mid-lengths and ends. It is then the colorist who mixes this darker formula methodically downwards into the areas highlighted with the use of intended, graduated strokes. This causes the softness and diffused natural beauty gradient at the root instead of a sharp and defined line of natural regrowth and lightened hair.

In the absence of root smudging, traditionally accentuated hair nearly always presents a very visible demarcation line with the new growth coming in – a sharp, more and more pronounced line between the natural root color and the highlighted areas beneath the root. This is what makes most of the traditional highlight clients come back to the salon after every six to eight weeks just to ensure that they appear seamless and well-polished. Root smudging resolves those who fight at the root by purposefully creating a blurred transition into the color, at the very first visit, making regrowth not an adversary.

Other than root smudging, a lived-in color application may also include:

1. Hand-painted balayage areas all through the lengths to bring brightness and depth
2. Foil highlights placed with strategic intent to bring additional focused brightness in particular areas
3. A finishing gloss applied to the entire head to harmonize all the differing tones and provide a mind-blowing shine

Each of the services is distinctly personalized, and that is why an in-depth, relaxed consultation with your colorist prior to the appointment will not be an option but a necessity for a truly personalized result that you will be sincerely grateful for.

Lasting Color of Lived-In

It is here that lived-in color is not merely a beautiful option but, indeed, a very practical and economical option, especially to the Orlando clients with their hectic careers, expanding families, busy social lifestyles, and schedules that leave very little practical space to be realistic with a monthly and a half-time salon appointment.

The traditional highlights that are not blended with root or smudged normally call out to a color touch-up every six to eight weeks. The cause lies in the structure and is irresistible: as natural hair grows out of the head, it forms a contrasting effect which is growing and more pronounced as the length of the highlighted hair below it. The week-long refinement and deepening of that line of demarcation, until finally it gives an effect of a two-color effect that appears unintentional and long overdue for a correction. Repeat of that cycle continues in an expensive manner, all year round.

Inhabited color discontinuities that cycle right away. Since the root zone has already been intentionally softened and mixed up with the root smudging during the initial service, new hair growth will become a part of the old color as gracefully and naturally as the weeks and months go by. Instead of struggling to resist the re-growth, lived in color is created structurally to grow out in a beautiful manner, the shadow root only slightly deepening as hair grows in, which in fact actually adds more dimension, multi-tonal appearance to the color, and in no way disrupts or compromises it.

The real-world outcome is a three to five-month comfortably lasting color service before a real touch-up is required. That prolonged time frame has real, tangible savings in terms of money in the span of a year. There is a reduction in the number of color appointments needed by the clients who live in the colors to two or four instead of six or eight. The visit frequency will be drastically lower than the basic highlight service, as each visit will be a few minutes longer than the basic visit because of the extra techniques involved, but the difference will be dramatically lower. To busy Orlando clients at Bonne Vie Salon, it is priceless: gorgeous, dimensional color which grows out so beautifully, requires less of your time, and leaves you with more time, money, and energy to do all the other things that really matter in your life.

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