Highlights 2.0, ’90s sun-kissed strands, and antique pearl are the buzzwords to keep in mind when it comes to summer blonde hair ideas this season. As for what you can leave behind? The iced-blonde trend, according to experts.
As anyone who has ever dyed their hair knows, blonde is never just blonde. The shade can take many forms, and right now it’s in a soft-girl era. The vibe for blonde hair colors this season is less surfer girl, more rom-com heroine. And the stark, frosty colors that were so cool in years past are being replaced with more delicate, dreamy, and surprisingly easy-to-wear iterations.
Ahead, these are the summer blonde hair ideas to bring to your next visit to your colorist.
Weekend blonde
Highlights are back, but not as you know them. For the past few seasons, balayage and working with a more natural base have (almost) made highlights redundant. This summer, however, “it’s about a lived-in look with a twist,” says Harriet Muldoon, blonde specialist at Larry King. She’s dubbed this look weekend blonde.
To Muldoon, Margot Robbie in her Wuthering Heights era is the perfect embodiment of this shade. “Weekend blonde is romantic and delicate, and gives off a soft golden glow,” she says, adding that to achieve the look, you should ask your colorist for a combination of high-lift tint and gentle bleach. The beauty of using a high-lift tint in between the foils, she says, is that it lifts the base to a butter-yellow hue, while a gentle bleach with a lower oxidation “won’t take your hair up to a super blonde, but keeps it on the golden side. It’s giving a Sunday-morning lived-in feel, wearing a cashmere luxury tracksuit with a coffee to go.”
Christel Barron-Hough, a colorist specializing in Scandi blonde and founder of Stil Salon in London, also is a fan of this midway blonde shade, which she says sits between warm and cool tones. For her, it moves away from the ’90s Olsen twins grunge era to something that’s more polished.
Rachel Green lights
Named after the Friends character, Rachel Green lights also involves using a high-lift tint rather than bleach, cementing this as the trending technique for 2026’s updated blonde. “This year we’re going in with more natural ’90s highlights—think Rachel Green era,” says Harriet. “A high-lift tint is essentially the lightest color before bleach to create more golden tones. They give off a more natural shade than the whiteness off a bleach, so I love to use them for a sun-kissed effect.”
Powdered pearl blonde
Think about the color of pearls, with their base cream shade and shimmering gray overtone. Now translate this to hair, and you get powdered pearl blonde.
“Whether that’s embracing natural grays or stepping away from warm golds, it has an almost 18th-century feel: matte, dense, and intentionally flat in tone,” says Nicole Kahlani, consultant colorist at Hershesons Fitzrovia in London. “It’s about leaning into natural ash undertones and treating color globally, inspired by a time before heavy dimension. Think runway blondes—soft, mousey, antique. If anything lifts, it’s only half a shade at the ends, just to gently brighten. The goal is an old-world, ‘dusty’ finish.”
Folklore blonde
Imagine a world where grown-out roots become your hair’s main character energy. Enter the folklore-blonde trend, a look Barron-Hough signposts as a major trend for summer 2026 and that she notes was already popular among Scandi-cool girls at Copenhagen Fashion Week.
“Visible roots are becoming increasingly romanticized,” says Barron-Hough. “With a soft, dreamlike quality, this is a defining color direction on the style scene this spring. Folklore blonde is all about telling the story within the hair and allowing the natural cycle of hair growth to take centre stage.”
Central to the look is a blurred transition, “as if the color has naturally diffused over time,” says Barron-Hough. “This trend reflects a shift away from ’90s grunge-girl roots; instead, the result is more organic, soft-focus, and modern.”
Barn-girl blonde
Lily Rose Depp, Margot Robbie, and Bella Hadid have all cosigned the barn-girl blonde hair look. Kahlani, who coined the term, describes the trend as a “muted, sandy blonde with a natural root and a slightly matte finish you get from softly lightened hair. It’s lighter through the lengths but still grounded with a natural root. Not overly sun-kissed like beach blonde, but slightly more muted and effortless, as if you’ve spent more time in the countryside than by the sea.”
In other words, think of barn-girl blonde as summer 2026’s answer to bronde hair and an antidote to iced blonde. “Ask your colorist for a tint to lighten your roots, if you don’t already have that natural honey-muted, dirty-blonde tone,” Kahlani advises. “Then request freehand-painted balayage using no foils to emphasise the ends. Make sure to include a color-melted toner to blend everything seamlessly. I refer to this technique as 3D toning, to add multiple dimensions in a natural way.”
A version of this story was previously published in Glamour UK.
