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Whether you’ve colored your hair once or hold a regular touch-up appointment, it’s possible that you might have a love-hate relationship with coloring your hair. Sure, the gorgeous results at the end are to love, but the expense, time, and maintenance are the can-do-without realities. That’s where hair color techniques like babylights come in. These delicate micro highlights require minimal upkeep, resulting in a lighter, brighter look.

Unlike traditional highlights, which create a visual contrast to add dimension, babylights are more subtle and delicate highlights. Think of them like illuminating rays of color that help hair appear naturally brighter and lighter. Despite the recent rise in popularity and buzziness on the web, babylights have been around for decades, and it’s also the technique credited to the hair color of celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Chrissy Teigen.

Ahead, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about the color technique, with insights from expert colorists on upkeep and how these delicate highlights differ from other popular hair color methods. Let’s dive in.

What are babylights?

Babylights are finely woven highlights that are seamlessly blended throughout the hair. “They are super fine and a lot thinner in size than a regular highlight, made to look more natural and blended,” Meri Kate O’Connor, a Los Angeles-based hair colorist, tells us. The understated highlights work on all hair colors and types (from blonde to brunette), replacing the look of chunkier high-contrast streaks with a softer, more natural-looking brightness that adds soft-focus shine to hair.

Babylights aren’t one-size-fits-all, and according to Ana Blitch, salon owner and colorist, when a client asks for them, they can help the stylist better understand your desired end goal. Babylights are a more natural, blended style, and you can work with your stylist to customize the amount of babylights needed for your desired look. “When a client comes in and asks for babylights, I immediately think natural, seamless, bright, and blended,” she describes, kind of similar to Chrissy Teigen’s hair with subtle, melted pops of honey blonde framing her face and the ends of her hair, or Beyoncé’s recent color with flecks of cool-toned platinum.