How to make meches at home: useful tips

“Meches” is a word of French origin which means “Locks” and indicates, in the field of aesthetics, a technique for coloring certain locks of human hair. There are many techniques to create light effects and hair lightening, but the meches technique is the most used.

In particular, when the streaks are made, entire strands of hair are made of a lighter color than the natural one. In this article we’ll see how to make meches alone at home.

Meches: history

The meches technique was studied for the first time in the 70s when technology and research began to make great strides. At a certain point, it was even able to cover white hair, without necessarily resorting to peroxide blond. During the 80s, meches became all the rage thanks to TV characters. Hairdressers all over the world then began to propose streaks to emulate television characters.

Subsequently, instead of streaks, highlights were proposed that gave the hair a softer and more delicate effect on the hair and the color could range from blond to red. The meches have gone out of fashion in the last decade also due to the shatush technique cleared by celebrities, but also by hairdressers from all over the world. In the last two years, however, the technique is back in fashion but in another tone, that of chunky.

Chunky is a popular trend especially by teenagers where hair are colored in different shades than natural ones, sometimes also using colors such as green, blue or fuchsia. With the chunky technique, the entire lock is not bleached, but only the tip with new and original colors.

How to make meches at home: necessary material

First of all, let’s start from the necessary material. Here’s what to use to make meches at home:

• Tinfoil or a hair cap
• Plastic gloves
• Oxygen in cream, to be chosen between 10 and 40 volumes (depending on the degree of lightening you want to obtain), also on sale in both pharmacies and perfumeries
• Thin brush, better if professional so that it does not lose the bristles, or hook if you will use the cap
• Comb
• Bleaching powder, which you can find in pharmacies and perfumeries
• A bowl with a spatula

How to make meches at home: method

Finally, here’s how to make them at home:

• If you are brunette and want blonde highlights, then you will need 40 volumes. When your hair is brown, 30 volumes are enough, while if they are already blond and you want to give lighter highlights, perhaps to cover grey hair, 20 or 10 volumes are enough. If you have black hair, however, blonde streaks are not recommended. However, you can be daring with red, blue or purple.
• First, wash your hair well and comb it gently to detangle it perfectly.
• Do not dry them, but just dab the excess water with the towel.
• After putting on the plastic gloves and mixing the bleaching powder with oxygen with the spatula in the bowl, apply the mixture, with a brush, on the strands you want to lighten and immediately wrap them with aluminum foil.
• Leave everything on for about 20 minutes and then wash your hair thoroughly under running water to make sure you get rid of the product. Apply some conditioner or a nourishing mask, rinse and proceed with styling.

• READ MORE: 10 tips for healthy hair