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Is Hair Highlighting With Lemon Juice an Option for You?

“Hair Highlighting with Lemon Juice Not for Everyone”Hair highlighting with lemon juice has been done for decades. I can remember my friends and I using lemon juice to try and add natural looking highlights to our hair in the summertime. Being a brunette, it never worked for me, but it did leave me with delicious smelling strands!

Hair highlighting with lemon juice works for Mischa Barton’s color

If your natural hair color is like Mischa Barton’s, then hair highlighting with lemon juice would be perfect for you.

If you are trying to avoid costly hair highlighting in the salon, you may be considering hair highlighting with lemon juice. But be forewarned, lemon juice does not work for every hair type. Lemon juice lightens hair because of the high acidity content of lemons. The acid helps to speed up the lightening affects that the sun already has on your hair.

So if your hair is dishwater blonde and lightens up in the summer time, then lemon juice may just help with the process. However, if you have darker hair like me, it probably won’t do much other than dry out your hair. Another thing to  note is that hair highlighting with lemon juice won’t work on previously colored hair. So if there is any hair color leftover on your hair, the lemon juice will not lighten it.

If you have dishwater blonde hair or lighter and want to try some highlighting at home,   here are some how-to’s on  highlighting with lemon juice.

How –To #1:
Mix the lemon juice with water. I’d suggest equal parts water to lemon juice to dilute the juice a bit and help it to spray evenly over hair. Also, use the juice squeezed from fresh lemons instead of bottled lemon juice, it will be a more concentrated and in that way more effective.

How-To #2:
Put the lemon juice mixture in a spray bottle to spray on hair. This will help  to apply the lemon juice more evenly to strands. You can also easily reapply the mixture by periodically spraying your hair after it get’s dry.

How-To #3:
For natural looking highlights, pull hair back into a loose ponytail, then spray the mixture all over hair until damp. Do this sometime when you will be out in the sun for a few hours (don’t forget your sun block) to get your best sun-kissed results.

So why do your hair highlighting with lemon juice instead of heading to the salon? Well, if you have the right hair for this, then it can give you natural looking highlights without the cost. If you don’t have the right hair for hair highlighting with lemon juice, I wouldn’t even bother trying, you may only end up with hair that is more dried out!

Redken’s Color Extend Sun After-Sun Mask is a great choice for deep conditioning your hair after at-home highlighting with lemon juice. The acid in lemon juice will dry your hair, not unlike using other hair coloring techniques to lighten your hair color. So, be sure to follow up with a good deep conditioner that will remoisturize your hair and give it lots of body and shine!

Got a question, war story or comment about this topic? Click on the "Leave Your Comments" link at the very bottom of this article. Some of my best ideas for future articles come from reading reader comments. I'd love to hear from you!

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