Brown hair with highlights looks flattering on a variety of hair lengths, cuts, and skin tones. All tones of brown work, meaning there’s quite a bit of customizability for the single shade of brown. Adding highlights and colors only expand this range of options.
Conveniently, you can change your brown locks with the seasons or even just with your mood, every shade and style is equally flattering. With this flexibility, you’ll be able to try new styles, like bold color highlights, or keep things softer with baby highlights and cool reds. The options are very nearly endless.
Brown Hair With Blonde Highlights:
1. Straight Brown Hair With Highlights
This subtle but polished look is flattering and stylish worn up, down, and anywhere in between. The highlights show through beautifully, contrasting in an eye-catching but subtle way with brown hair.
The overall look of this style is a soft and subtle one, but with just enough highlighting action to set it apart from a plain brown do.
Brown hair naturally dyes slightly different across your head, giving your highlights minimal but impactful brightness changes throughout. Highlighted brown hair gives the perfect soft pop.
2. Light Brown Hair With Highlights
Light brown hair shares all the benefits of darker brown hair. It looks stunning with blonde highlights, just like darker brown hair.
With light brown hair, you can opt for lighter highlights for greater contrast or stick with a subtle shade of blonde. The darker you go with the highlights the more natural your overall style will appear.
On light brown hair, lighter highlights will give the appearance of a soft blonde, just on the cusp of light brown. Each of the two options looks amazing curly, straight, and every style in between.
3. Short Brown Hair With Highlights
Short brown hair looks equally as stylish and flattering with some highlights. In addition to how great it looks, highlights help add a touch of depth and contrast to shorter hairstyles.
This is perfect for both creating a look that’s set apart from the rest and for giving your hair some volume and interest. In each and all cases, highlights look great on short brown hair of all shades and tones.
Highlights are also easier to maintain than a complete hair dye, which is great for shorter hairstyles when grow-out is easier to spot.
4. Light Brown Hair With Blonde Highlights
After highlights are added in, light brown hair turns an especially flattering shade of light brown, bordering on dirty blonde or dark blonde. That shade encompasses its overall appearance seen at a glance, but when looking closer, a variety of shades are visible.
This variety creates depth and adds a unique twist to light brown hair in a way that is subtle and an easy match for many personal styles. Maintenance is even easier since new growth is harder to spot.
5. Brown Hair With Burgundy Highlights
Burgundy highlights are a great addition to brown hair. They pull out any natural red or caramel hues in your brown locks, creating a flattering contrast and making all of your hair look warmer.
In addition to this, burgundy highlights are a more natural look compared to blonde or platinum blonde highlights. This may sound ideal for you if you’re hoping for a unique but subtle hair change.
6. Brown Hair With Golden Highlights
Golden highlights work like the burgundy color to draw out natural golden hues within your hair. That flattering look of sun-kissed brown hair is what these highlights accomplish on cloudy days and sunny days.
The golden look also settles in nicely to all different shades of brown, from darker woodsy browns to lighter fawns. Your hair will almost take on a life of its own, as the glinting highlights add depth and movement to an otherwise flat canvas.
7. Dark Brown Hair With Red Highlights
Dark brown hair looks stunning contrasted with red highlights. The warm hues of red pull any natural red undertones from your hair while also adding interest and depth to your hair.
The complementing colors of dark brown and red work together seamlessly in hair, creating a look that is the perfect combination of subtle and different. While this warmer look is perfect for colder seasons, it stays looking flattering all year round.
8. Brown Hair With Pink Highlights
Try adding pink highlights to your brown hair for a truly unique look. Though the color combination may initially seem odd, the success of this style proves otherwise.
This option is perfect for those who want colored hair but may not be ready for a whole head of pink or for those who want to give the color a test run before dying their whole head. In any case, pink and brown combine flawlessly for an eye-catching style.
9. Dark Brown Hair With Highlights
Whereas highlights make light brown hair look almost blonde, highlighted dark brown hair takes on a more chocolatey tone. The soft highlights contrast from the dark brown in a hue just a few shades lighter, adding contrast and depth to plain dark brown locks.
The combined result is the perfect blend of warm and soft browns, complementing each other just as well as they complement your look.
10. Brown Hair With Platinum Highlights
For a look a bit less on the subtle side, try contrasting your brown air with platinum blonde highlights. This icy look offers a variety of shades and hues, all combined to create one stunning effect.
Platinum highlights look great against a range of browns, from the lightest to the darkest and even reddish browns. The contrasting shades add movement and volume to your hair, whether you wear it curled, up, down, or straight.
11. Brown Hair With Red And Blonde Highlights
Red and blonde highlights are a sweet combination of the complementary shades of blonde and red against brown hair. With these colors teaming up, your brown hair will pop like it never has.
This twist on the classic one-colored highlight look is a way to make it your own and set your hairdo apart from the crowd (and look good doing it!). Red and blonde highlights help pull colors from your hair while lightening it at the same time, the perfect combination.
12. Black Hair With Brown Highlights
For a perfectly warm, muted look, look to brown highlights. When paired with black hair, brown highlights add a subtle twist of depth and contrast. This helps highlight both your hair and how you choose to style it.
Highlighted sections will pop in curls or an updo and look a bit more subtle in hair that’s left down and straight. The glints of lighter brown also add definition to black hair, which can otherwise be difficult to obtain.
13. Brown Hair Transitioning To Gray With Highlights
Brown-to-gray hair looks even more beautiful when contrasted with some highlights. These areas of lighter hair perfectly cut the warmer tones of the brown and gray, making your whole look pop in a completely unique way.
Using a combination of colors and techniques helps you stay in style throughout the seasons, as each color shines most depending on your style and how you rock it.
Keeping brown in the equation also offers you a chance to try a more daring hair color while flawlessly combining it with the one you already have.
14. Medium Length Brown Hair With Blonde Highlights
Brown hair of all lengths looks great with blonde highlights. For shorter or medium-length cuts, highlights add some definition and contrast to your style, which complements the length of your hair and helps it shine even more.
This style is perfect for the warmer months up ahead, with chic warm tones and a shorter cut to keep you cool. The blonde highlights give your locks a sun-kissed look, which is a universally flattering style suited to every season.
15. Dark Brown Hair With Purple Highlights
Purple highlights blend beautifully with dark brown hair. They offer just enough pop and color to set your look apart while remaining subtle enough to not completely change your look. It’s a perfect option for those looking to dip their toes into the world of hair coloring.
The cooler tone of purple melds well with dark brown hair, as the two offsets and complement each other in a most flattering way. Give this look a try if you’re ready for something fresh and different.
16. Medium Brown Hair With Dark Red Highlights
Dark red pulls warmth and glow from brown hair. Medium brown hair with highlights in a dark shade of red takes on an overall warm look, akin to glowing coals and dark sunsets.
While this look is especially stunning in the colder months of fall, there’s nothing preventing it from looking just as good in the summer and spring. It’s versatile through and through and the perfect combination of subtle but eye-catching.
17. Natural Curly Brown Hair With Blonde Highlights
The gorgeous effect of highlights on brown hair is far from lost on naturally curly hair. Highlights add a range of depth and movement to curly brown hair, helping define each curl and boost them to their fullest potential.
The combined look is of the utmost radiance, your hair will appear thicker, livelier, and with a sun-kissed kick. This look perfectly suits a variety of curl types as well.
18. Brown Hair With Auburn Highlights
Auburn highlights take brown hair to new levels. The orangey-red shade of auburn perfectly draws out redder tones within your brown hair, adding a layer of depth that couldn’t otherwise be achieved.
This complementary contrast also adds definition to your hair, which makes it look both healthier and more voluminous. The softer shade of auburn is perfect for those who like the look of red highlights but want something a bit more subtle.
19. Brown Hair With Silver Highlights
Brown hair is perfectly complemented by silver highlights. The silver shade is just a touch different from the blonde highlights we’re used to, adding a creative spin on the flattering highlight look.
Using silver for your highlight color guarantees a unique look, one that’s fresh and different but also perfectly subtle. Incorporating silver highlights into your look is a great way to experiment with new colors without taking the full plunge.
20. Brown Hair With Purple Highlights
Purple perfectly contrasts the cooler tones within brown hair, pulling them out for an overall cooler look. And unlike traditional highlights, purple highlights are not meant to be subtle. Incorporating these into your brown hair guarantees a beautifully creative look, different, but not wildly so.
You may want to try this look to see how purple suits you or to ease into the purple color with tasteful gradualness. And depending on how thin your highlighted sections are, you can make the look even more subtle.
21. Brown Hair With Ash Highlights
Ash highlights are the slightly more subtle spin on silver or platinum blonde highlights. Since ash has more of a brown undertone, it blends and melds with brown hair a bit more naturally than lighter shades.
This may be perfect if you’re looking for something fresh and unique but still want to keep much of your same overall look. Ash highlights add gentle depth and definition to your hair in a way that’s both stylish and subtle. They look great in a variety of hair types, too.
22. Brown Hair With Red Highlights
Brown hair melds seamlessly with red highlights, though the color itself may seem bold or bright. When paired with brown hair, red highlights really do their job, highlighting hues and tones from the brown while adding a fun element to an otherwise plain look.
Like the other color highlight looks, red highlights add that bit of interest and personality without needing to commit to a whole head of red. And the red and brown look great together, a nice plus!
23. Brown Hair With Caramel Highlights
Caramel highlights light brown hair in a way that is complementary and warm. If you’ve never been a fan of the sometimes harsh blonde highlights, caramel highlights may be your perfect solution.
The slightly orange shade of caramel pulls warmth from your brown hair while still lightening its overall look. The result is a unique one, as flattering as it is appealing to the eye. Caramel highlights mimic the look of natural sun highlights, which helps keeps a summer look all year round.
24. Brown Hair With Gray Highlights
Brown hair pairs exceptionally well with gray highlights. The completed look is slightly more subtle than silver or platinum highlights but a bit bolder than ash highlights. It sits in the perfect middle range, with all the attributes of both ends of the spectrum.
The lighter gray color adds contrast and definition to brown hair, while the gray color itself makes the look more unique and set apart from traditional highlights. It’s a perfect style for those looking to get creative.
25. Brown Hair With Blue Highlights
Though it may seem like an odd combination, brown and blue work beautifully together, blue highlights take the cooler tones of brown and make them more obvious, lightening the overall tone of your hair.
And like the other colored highlights, blue highlights are a sweet way to add something different but flattering to your look. The highlighted strands keep the look on the subtle side, while the color itself is anything but creating a uniquely perfect final effect.
