30 Pictures of Chic Hair Highlights to Find Your Killer Look for 2025
Hair highlights are everywhere nowadays, although you may not even realize it since many styles create seamless blends with natural colors. Read all about various types of hair highlights, and their pros and cons below.
When choosing highlights for hair, you will need to monkey with terms like sombre or babylights, which can result in a disastrous misunderstanding between you and your colorist. So, what are hair highlights? These are pieces of hair with their natural color lifted in any way, using any technique. As for the methods used and the styles created, scroll through our collection of pictures where all the terms are sliced and diced.
1. Ashy Bronde with Face-Framing Highlights. Brighter pieces placed near the face to direct attention to the facial features and compliment the complexion remain among the best hair highlights in 2025.
2. Blonde Balayage Highlights for Light Ginger Hair. This bob boasts hand-painted highlights and lowlights that fuse to the base color with no visible demarcation and create more natural movement in the hair.
3. Brunette with Peach-Tinted Ombre Highlights. We are sure you have seen plenty of inspiring hair highlights pictures with a color scheme gradually transitioning from one shade at the roots to quite another hue at the ends. Yes, this is the ombre type of highlights.
4. Cappuccino Brown with Full-Head Highlights. This delicate brown color palette is filled with warm golden and pale beige hues thanks to full highlights placed throughout the hair.
5. Summery Ribbon Highlights. Not as sharp and thick as chunky highlights, this beautifully highlighted hair still has visible strips of cool blonde inserted among darker sections for extra dimension.
6. Espresso Brown Baby Highlights. These dark tresses shimmer with smoky light brown delicately blended into the base color, which is exactly the effect thin highlights, also called babylights, should produce.
7. Bold White Highlights for Fine Hair. Turning to high-contrast shades is another way to build volume in fine locks while also adding more shine and better movement.
8. Hazelnut Foil Highlights in Black Hair. Contrary to common belief, seamless color transitions like this can be achieved with the foilayage technique where hair is wrapped in foils.
9. Subtle Platinum Highlights for Thin Hair. The play of bright white and muted beige shades in this style helps to bring dimension into the thin strands and land an illusion of fullness.
10. Brightened Up Hair with Frosting Highlights. Free-hand painting on the hair surface is one of the good old tried and tested highlighting techniques that infuse subtle pops of brightness into the locks.
11. High Contrast Chunky Highlights. Although such thick and distinct panels of ash blonde might feel like a blast from the past, zebra-like hairstyles have been among the hottest types of highlights for the last several years.
12. Bronde Shag with Dimensional Highlights. This light brown hairstyle features blonde multidimensional highlights which are much lighter than the base color to create contrast and depth.
13. Toasted Brown Highlights. It’s a new take on caramel highlights, which implies giving them a more toasted feel for a warmer, richer, and more dimensional look.
14. Flaming Red Teasylights. This coloring technique implies teasing the hair to lift the color in very small sections and gets into the hottest highlight trends for 2025 thanks to the stunning diffused effect it delivers.
15. Ash-Blonde Highlights Built with Strobing. Just like face contouring, hair strobing is aimed at the strategic placement of highlights tailored to your face shape, complexion, and hair type.
16. Blonde Highlights with Red Undertones. Strawberry blonde has been trending for several years running, and this peachy hue accentuated with shiny white pieces is the look to take in 2025.
17. Gorgeous Dusty Blonde with Strandlighting. If you are after a bit of lighting with no harsh lines attached, dyeing just a pinch of hair strand instead of a whole lock is what you need.
18. Golden Sun-Kissed Highlights. Those wishing to nail a summer-ready look with some lighter strands kind of faded in the sun should get a dose of this Cali highlights inspo.
19. Pearly Brown Hair with Partial Highlights. Lifting color only in certain sections rather than all along the perimeter is an alternative way to incorporate highlights in hair.
20. Dark Chocolate Brown Hair with Bold Money Piece Highlights. While face-framing highlights can be worn with a balayage or other types of highlighted hair, these money pieces create a focal point on their own.
21. Midnight Black with Unexpected Peek-A-Boo Highlights. Hiding the rainbow or contrasting shades underneath some solid color is definitely one of the coolest ways to highlight your hair.
22. Cool-Tone Dark Brown with High-Contrast Highlights. This girl has her black base paired with golden blonde highlights to catch more light and enjoy more attention with such a stunning definition.
23. Subtle Highlights in Chestnut Brown Hair. Seamlessly blended shades just a bit lighter than your base color look exquisite and natural, so we are not surprised this type makes it into the trendiest hair highlights for 2025.
24. Deep Coffee-Toned Brown with Barely-There Highlights. If some hair highlights photos make you wonder whether it is a color job or a natural play of shades, the barely-there coloring has hit the target.
25. Naturally Flowing Golden Flamboyage. A lovely child of balayage and ombre, the flamboyage method uses strips of transparent adhesive paper to separate the right amount of hair and have better control of color lifting.
26. Strawberry Blonde Sombre Highlights. While classic ombre encourages bold gradients, its softer version (hence the name) keeps a natural color at the roots and goes slightly lighter toward the tips.
27. Bronze Brown with Caramel Highlights. The expensive brunette trend is going to last throughout 2025, so pairing natural brown with neutral to warm highlights one or two levels lighter than the base is just the thing.
28. Intensive Red Highlights for Chestnut Brown. Blonde shades are not the only weapons in the arsenal of brunettes wishing to spice up their looks, the more so as you can keep reds on the warmer or cooler side depending on your skin tone and eye color.
29. Gray Highlights for a Salt & Pepper Style. Gray blending is the hottest method of incorporating natural gray in a customized color scheme, for example, by mixing silver highlights with ashy brown lows.
30. Sparkling Curly Hair with Pintura Highlights. This curl-specific hand-painted technique invented and popularized by DevaCurl allows for highlighting each curl differently to emphasize the pattern in the most flattering way.
So, are hair highlights in? The answer is, obviously, “yes”, and you have plenty of colors, looks, and techniques to embrace hair highlights to your best advantage. Take a picture of your hair goal to a salon and talk to your colorist about how to adapt the look to your features.
