Ask three different Perth salons what "airtouch" means and you'll get three different answers — one will tell you it's just balayage with extra steps, another will call it a type of highlight, and a third will actually explain it properly. It's neither of the other two. It's its own technique, built around a blow dryer instead of a foil or a teasing comb, and the tool you use to separate the hair is the whole reason it looks the way it does.
Worth saying upfront: we're the only certified Airtouch specialists in Perth. We didn't learn this from a workshop or a video — we flew to New York and trained in person with the colourist who created the technique, because a method this dependent on precise airflow and sectioning needed to be learned at the source, not passed down secondhand.
What airtouch actually is
A seamless, luminous blonde transformation — zero compromise on condition, even starting from a hard demarcation line.
Training in Airtouch in New York, directly with the technique's creator.
A face-framing Airtouch refresh — a quick example of the technique used to freshen up an existing colour.
Brassy, rusty brunette corrected to a cool, metallic, dimensional finish — a full Airtouch consultation, process, and reveal, start to finish.
Airtouch is a lightening technique where the colourist takes a horizontal section of hair, holds tension at the ends, and blasts it with a blow dryer. The finer, shorter, more porous hairs — the ones that would grab too much lightener and blow out pale and patchy — lift away in the airflow and get pushed aside. What's left hanging is a clean "curtain" of only the thicker, stronger strands, and that's what gets painted with lightener. The hair that blew away underneath stays undyed, acting as a natural root shadow.
That's the whole trick: the dryer does the sorting that a comb or your fingers can't do precisely. It's not about taking longer — airtouch is a precise, considered technique, built to create a seamless finished result that follows your hair's natural growth pattern, so the colour graduates so gradually there's no point you could put your finger on and say "this is where it starts."
How it's different from highlights
Traditional highlights are woven and foiled. The colourist sections the hair, weaves out fine strands with a tail comb, wraps them in foil, and applies lightener under heat and complete isolation from the rest of the hair. That isolation is exactly why highlights lift brighter and more predictably than almost any other technique — foil traps heat, heat speeds processing, and you get high-contrast, defined pieces of colour against your base.
Airtouch trades that contrast for blend. There's no foil, no weaving, no hard-edged piece of colour sitting next to untouched hair. If you want visible, distinct dimension — chunky face-framing pieces, a defined money-piece — highlights still do that better. If you want colour that looks like it happened to your hair naturally rather than was placed there, airtouch wins.
How it's different from teasylights
Teasylights are the technique airtouch gets confused with most, because both aim for the same soft, undetectable result. The difference is the tool. Teasylights use backcombing — the colourist teases a section with a comb until it's diffused and fluffed, then hand-paints lightener through it, sometimes with foil underneath to boost lift. The teasing does mechanically what the airtouch dryer does with air: it separates out the strands that shouldn't get full-strength product.
In practice: teasylights are faster than airtouch and lift slightly brighter because foil can be added under the painted sections. Airtouch takes longer but leaves a noticeably softer, more gradual root shadow because the dryer separates strands more finely and consistently than a comb can by hand. Neither involves the clay-based freehand painting of true balayage — teasylights and airtouch are both refinements built to remove the visible banding that balayage can still leave behind at the root.
Which one actually suits your hair
This is where a proper consultation earns its place, because the "best" technique depends on things you can't see in a photo:
- Porosity. Airtouch is genuinely kinder to over-porous or previously coloured hair, because the dryer filters out exactly the fragile strands that would over-lift and break. If your hair has a colour history, this matters more than the trend photo you're bringing in.
- Desired contrast. Want your colour noticed from across the room? Highlights. Want people to ask "did you just get back from holiday?" without knowing why? Airtouch or teasylights.
- Time and budget. Airtouch is the most time-intensive of the three and priced accordingly. Teasylights sit in the middle. Highlights are typically the fastest full-head service.
- Regrowth tolerance. Both airtouch and teasylights are built to soften the root line as it grows out — genuinely useful in Perth, where WA sun accelerates fading and makes any hard demarcation line show up faster than it would in a milder climate.
Why the root shadow matters more here than anywhere else
Perth's UV load is unforgiving on lightened hair. A technique that leaves a hard line between lightened and natural hair will show that line within weeks here, not months. Airtouch's undyed under-layer isn't just a styling effect — it's a practical buffer that means your regrowth photographs as "soft transition" for far longer before it needs a refresh. That's the actual argument for choosing it over a faster, higher-contrast option, not just the aesthetic one.
We talk through porosity, existing colour history, and how much maintenance you're realistically willing to commit to before recommending any of these three at consultation — you can see the full breakdown of colour and styling services we offer on our services page.
Pricing and how often you'll actually need it
Airtouch starts from $475, reflecting the extra hours it takes to section and lighten hair strand by strand with a blow dryer rather than a comb or foil. Because the technique is specifically built to soften the regrowth line, most clients are only back in the chair every 4 to 6 months for a refresh — not the 6 to 8 week turnaround a high-contrast foil service usually demands.
That said, the exact price and timeline depend entirely on your starting point: hair length, existing colour history, and how much correction (if any) is needed before we can even begin the Airtouch process. This is why consultation is essential — we won't quote a technique or a price without seeing and testing your hair first.
The honest bottom line
Airtouch, highlights, and teasylights aren't competing versions of the same service — they're three different tools solving three different problems: contrast, speed, and grow-out softness, respectively. The right one depends on your hair's condition and how it grew in last time, not which technique has the most views on Instagram this week. Ask your colourist which one your specific hair actually calls for, and ask them to explain why.
Bureau The Salon — 444 Beaufort St, Highgate, Perth.
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