35 Gorgeous Highlights For Dark Brown Hair

An incredibly subtle touch of chestnut ombre highlights Kerry Washington’s dark brown hair in a luxurious yet natural way.

Bold balayage highlights in a warm caramel shade bring a dramatic color contrast when paired with a dark brown base color. If you love high-drama hair color that won’t have you fading into the background, this is an incredible hair color style for any season.

Thin ribbons of golden blonde highlight the outermost layer of this rich, dark brown hair color. Try this style out if you’re looking for maximum impact highlights on a budget, or if you’d like to add some depth to your style with minimal lightening.

Highlighting your intense, black-brown hair with a medium brown balayage adds depth and dimension in the most sophisticated way. Try this option if you’ve been looking for a nice starter highlight that won’t make you look drastically different.

These dusty rose balayage highlights make for a perfect accent over a dark brown base shade, proving that trendy rose gold hair color isn’t only for blondes.

One of the latest hair color techniques, hair strobing aims to highlight your hair in areas where light would naturally hit, and is often referred to as “contouring for hair”. This style shows how a bold color contrast between dark brown hair and ash blonde highlights can look effortless and natural thanks to the strobing technique.

Medium auburn balayage brings a perfect pop of warm color to a dark brown base color with hints of red in it. If you’d like to wear dark brown hair with a very light complexion, these highlights can help to soften the style, and do an excellent job of making green eyes stand out.

Jessica Biel has one of the most enviable heads of hair in Hollywood, with luscious locks that are always on point in terms of both cut and color. These warm caramel highlights create the perfect accent for her natural dark brown hair, and bring out the glowy color in her warm, medium skin tone.

The tiger’s eye hair color trend aims to mimic the rich brown and yellow hues seen in the polished gemstone of the same name. While some color trends can be hard to translate into the real world, especially for anyone with a more laid back personal style, tiger’s eye is completely doable in anyone’s everyday life. This color trend will warm up your dark brown base color with golden browns and blondes, and won’t look like a worn-out fad a few months from now.

Transitioning from dark brown roots to medium and then light blonde, this blonde ombre color melt will completely transform your hair color style.

If you’ve got cool undertones in your skin, these ash blonde highlights might look more natural against your complexion than warmer golden shades. If you’re interested in all-over highlights that begin close to your roots, this color matching with skin tone can make the difference between “so-so” and “so amazing”.

This deep shade of maroon walks a fine line between natural and unnatural looking hair color. It might not occur in nature, but it doesn’t look so out there that professional workplaces would say no to the deep red shade.

Some women find that lighter, warmer hair colors are more flattering against their skin as they age, and these highlights are a great way to take advantage without going completely blonde. These dramatic highlights create a blonde curtain on either side of the face that helps to bridge the gap between a lighter skin tone and dark brown hair.

If your dark brown hair has lots of red tones in it, auburn highlights offer up a natural-looking way to warm up your style. Consider this a softer, less intense version of the pumpkin spice and tiger’s eye hair color trends.

These ash blonde highlights transition from very thin babylights at the roots to a higher concentration at the ends. The end result is a cool, brownish blonde palette that looks chic and sophisticated.

Balayage and ombre can be more difficult to wear with shorter haircuts, making this light feathering technique the perfect way to highlight shorter, dark brown hair.

Get your dark brown locks ready for autumn with a copper balayage that could rival the colors of any fall foliage. This hair color technique is easy to grow out, meaning you can wear this style all the way through until spring.

With an incredibly radiant shade of golden blonde, these face framing highlights allow your hair to reflect the ray of sunshine that you are.

Very dark brown hair pairs well with almost any vibrant hair color, while this intense maroon shade is especially flattering on women with deeper skin tones or olive-colored complexions.

Look closely and you’ll see ribbons of dark and medium gold mixed throughout this dark brown hair, while auburn strands are used to frame the face. While all of these different tones have the potential to look overly busy, their light touch placement and the fact that they all encompass a warm color family makes this style look chic and perfectly subtle.

Warm brown babylights are concentrated around the face to give you a chic color style that looks deceivingly low maintenance.

With a fairly light shade of blush rose gold, these highlights offer up a high contrast way to wear the trendy pinkish blonde shade against your dark brown hair.

This incredibly subtle deep caramel balayage is the perfect highlight for any dark haired ladies who are on the fence about getting highlights.

This rich magenta shade will add a vibrant pop of color to your dark brown hairstyle without looking like a cheap or inappropriate choice for more mature women.

These medium brown babylights are so good most people will mistake them for your natural hair color.

A bright bubblegum pink shade in hair’s underneath layer pops out at the ends of hair, but also highlights the dark brown base color where it peeks through.

Chrissy Teigen’s golden brown babylights add a super soft glow to her dark brown hair and bring out the golden tones in her skin. This subtle highlighting style is perfect keeping your hair color rich yet natural for shorter cuts.

This hairstyle takes a fairly bold approach to highlighting curls, resulting in a rich contrast between dark brown roots and warm, golden ends.

These gorgeous, muted purple tones add the perfect accent to dark brown hair at any time of year. Try them in winter and feel like a frosted sugarplum, or match the vibrant shades of spring and summer flowers.

“Bronde” hair is one of 2017’s biggest color trends, and it’s easy to try out without committing to an all-over color style. This bronde ombre is a sophisticated highlight for dark brown roots, and a good way to test out the shade.

Dark brown hair gets warmed up with golden ombre and dip dye highlights, making this an excellent choice for women with warm undertones in their skin who are looking for a summer highlight makeover.

These chestnut babylights truly live up to their name, being so lightly applied that they look like the glowy new strands of someone years away from their first trip to the salon.

Anne Hathaway’s porcelain skin and dark brown hair color are an essential part of her style, but that doesn’t mean she’s above experimenting with highlights. This piecey golden ombre brings out warm tones in her eyes and cheeks, while keeping her signature dark brown shade as part of the style.

Ribbons of gingery color bring a touch of autumn spice to dark espresso strands. By applying highlights in thin pieces, this color doesn’t look out of place even when hair is worn pin straight.

This dark greenish-blue balayage creates an earthy, oceanic color palette when used to highlight cool, dark brown hair.