Hair coloring has come a long way from traditionally used dyes to the art of hair coloring, where clients can express themselves and create a beautiful and personalized look.
Hair coloring is an art practiced at Kosa Salon SF, where decades of experience and innovation have crafted beautiful hair for clients.

However, foiling is my favorite technique. It’s precise and allows more versatility in color placement. But what are foils, and why are they so important?
In this article, we will discuss foil, its benefits, and how it can improve your look.
What Are Foils in Hair Coloring?
Foils are little sheets of aluminum that hairstylists use during the coloring process to section hair into smaller areas so they can apply color to individual strands without messing up the rest of the hair. You can do everything with foils from sun-kissed highlights to big, multi-dimensional colors.

Initially, we used foils to create more natural-looking highlights and to keep the process more isolated. Foils opened up new possibilities for stylists to develop new techniques and styles over time. The technique quickly became a crucial tool for hair coloring.
Benefits of Using Foils in Hair Coloring
The use of foils in hair coloring has a number of advantages:
- It provides a level of control and precision to apply the color to certain areas of the hair, which is important for creating intricate and detailed looks, such as a highlight lowlight or balayage.
- Foils allow the color to penetrate and develop better. The heat generated by the foils helps the color develop more intensely—a very important factor in lightening the hair, which requires a more intense chemical reaction to get the desired result.
- Foils create multi-tonal effects. Stylists can isolate different sections of hair and choose different colors and shades to enhance each area in a highly personalized way. This flexibility is what makes foils so widely used in hair coloring.
Different Types of Foil Techniques
Different techniques use foils for hair coloring. Each has its advantages and final results.

- Classic Foiling: This is your grandmother’s foiling when the hairdresser wraps sections of hair in foils to add highlights or lowlights.
- Babylights: These are the tiniest highlights you can do on hair and are named for the natural highlights that exist when children’s hair is first born. Babylights are created by taking very small sections of hair and applying a color that is very subtle and light.
- Teasy lights: Teasy lights are created by teasing the hair before applying the color and wrapping it in foils. This means that teasy lights create less obvious color transitions, with soft, dynamic graduations between the color-treated and untreated hair.
- Foilayage: Foilayage is a hybrid between foiling and balayage (French for ‘sweeping’ or ‘painting’), in which the color is applied freehand with a sweeping motion and then wrapped in foils. The results are a more natural, semi-precise, sun-kissed color with precise highlights and softer transitions.
Step-by-Step Guide to Foil Application
Preparing the Hair:
Start by washing and drying the hair to remove any dirt or oil that might prevent the color from adhering to the cuticle. Apply a protective treatment to keep the hair as healthy as possible during the coloring process.
Sectioning and Placement:
The next stage is sectioning. This is simply cutting the hair into smaller, more manageable sections that sit in the foils. The positioning of the foils will depend on the desired outcome and the technique you use.
Classic foils have a highly structured pattern (usually central), while balayage/teasy lights have a more random placement and blending.
Timing and Processing:
Apply foils and allow the color to process for the required time, depending on the effect and color used. The stylist will check the color to ensure it’s developing to the right tone and not over-processing.
Post-Treatment Care:
After the color has developed, remove the foils, rinse, and condition the hair. Since coloring can dry out the hair, use a high-quality conditioner to restore moisture. I also recommend using a color-safe shampoo and conditioner to prolong the color’s vibrancy and keep your hair looking as healthy as possible.
Foils for Different Hair Types and Textures:
You can tailor foils to work for straight, curly, fine, thick, coarse, mousy, or jet-black hair (you get the idea).

- Fine-haired: Fine hair can handle smaller sections, and colors that are not too intense and subtle can look natural and fine. You can place the foils closer together to add more dimension and depth to the hair without making the color too intense.
- Thick Hair: In thick hair, the bigger the section, the bolder the color, the more dramatic the effect. The foils can be bigger and further apart to create a more definite, structured result.
- Curly Hair: Place foils parallel to the curl pattern to enhance the texture of curly hair and achieve more defined and voluminous curls.
- Straight Hair: Foiling will likely add more movement and dimension to straight hair (that’s also why it’s so great for brunette women who want to go blonde). For a fuller, more voluminous, and textured look, place foils to create soft transitions between the colored and natural hair.
Wrapping Up
Foils are essential in achieving precise, brilliant, multi-dimensional hair color. At Kosa Salon SF, our talented stylists use this technique to achieve stunning, custom-designed results to enhance your natural beauty.
Whether you want lovely highlights or dramatic, artistic coloring, we will ensure the hair remains in excellent condition and glowing.
Whether you’re looking to reinvent your hairstyle completely or want a trim, Luxury Hair Salon in San Francisco is the place to go. With expert coloring services, your hair transformation will be as luxurious as San Francisco.