Not every client who wants brighter hair actually wants a full head of it. More and more of this spring's consultations start the same way: someone wants their face to look lifted, sun-touched, awake — but they don't want the upkeep, the cost, or the commitment of an all-over blonde. The answer, most of the time, is face-framing colour. Sometimes called a money piece, sometimes a halo, sometimes just “can you brighten it around here” with a finger circling the hairline. It's the single most requested placement we're seeing walk through the door this September.
Done well, it's a small amount of foil doing a disproportionate amount of work. Done badly, it's two stripes either side of a parting that grow out looking like a mistake. The difference is entirely in the placement, not the amount of lightener.
What actually is face-framing blonde?
It's a targeted lightening placement concentrated around the parting, hairline, and the pieces that naturally fall forward around the face — rather than colour distributed evenly across the whole head. Instead of sectioning the entire head for foils or balayage, we work from the part outward, placing lighter pieces where light naturally hits the face: just off-centre from the parting, along the temples, and through the front layers that frame the jaw. Everything behind that stays close to the natural base, which is what keeps the cost and the maintenance down compared with a full head.
The two techniques doing the rounds right now are the money piece and the halo. A money piece is asymmetric — heavier, brighter foils on the side you part your hair away from, echoing the way natural sun-lightening actually falls on most people's hair. A halo is more symmetrical: a band of brightness around the crown and front perimeter, described well as “a sun around your face” effect. Which one we use comes down to how you part your hair and how much contrast you actually want.
Why is this the trend for spring specifically?
Two reasons. First, the aesthetic itself: this season's blonde is moving away from icy, stark platinum toward soft, dimensional, lived-in tones — biscotti, honey, champagne rather than white-blonde. Face-framing placement is built for that softness; it's inherently more blended than a full head of foils because it's working with fewer, more deliberate sections. Second, it's a low-commitment way to test blonde before spring turns into summer. If you're not sure you want to go fully blonde, a money piece gives you the brightness around your face — the part everyone actually looks at in a conversation or a photo — without recolouring hair that's rarely even seen.
How is it actually placed and toned?
Placement starts with where you actually part your hair, not where a photo shows it. We ask clients to part their hair the way they wear it day to day before a single foil goes in, because a money piece placed for a centre part looks wrong within a week if you actually wear a deep side part. From there, foils are woven finer and placed closer to the root than a typical balayage, since the whole point is brightness starting near the hairline rather than growing in from mid-shaft down.
Toning is where face-framing pieces live or die. Because this colour sits directly against your face, any warmth or brassiness reads immediately — there's no rest of the head to balance it out visually. We tone these sections slightly cooler and glossier than we would a full-head blonde, specifically to counteract how quickly warmth shows up in direct light near the skin. It's a small technical difference, but it's the reason a professionally placed money piece looks intentional and a DIY box-blonde streak looks orange within three washes.
Who does this actually suit, and who should skip it?
It suits almost any base colour, which is part of why it's so popular — brunettes get the most dramatic contrast, but it works on dark blonde and even on already-lightened hair as a refresh around the face without redoing the whole head. It's a particularly good option if you've had a balayage or Airtouch service before and want to brighten just the front sections between full appointments, rather than booking a whole new colour session.
Where we'd steer someone away from it: very short haircuts, where there isn't enough length for the placement to read as intentional rather than patchy, and hair that's already quite damaged or over-processed near the front hairline, where the priority needs to be strengthening the hair before adding more lightener to the most fragile section.
How do you keep it looking fresh?
Because the lightened pieces sit so close to the root, regrowth shows faster here than on a full balayage — expect to be back in six to eight weeks for a touch-up on the framing pieces, even if the rest of your colour can go longer between visits. At home, a purple or violet-pigmented shampoo from Wella Pro used once or twice a week keeps the toning from shifting warm between appointments, and a bond-strengthening treatment from System Professional on the lightened sections specifically — not the whole head — protects the hair that's doing the most work.
The appeal of this placement is that it's honest about where your eye actually goes. Nobody's looking at the back of your head in conversation. If brightness around your face is genuinely the goal, there's rarely a reason to lighten hair nobody sees.
Bureau The Salon — 444 Beaufort St, Highgate, Perth. Book your consultation via Fresha. See more transformations on Instagram.
