Amal Clooney’s ‘salted caramel’ hair colour was from a £12 box – here’s how to recreate it at home

When you have hair as long, thick and plentiful as Amal Clooney, it’s nothing short of an adventurous statement to add a head full of highlights. The human rights lawyer and wife of George Clooney appeared on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend, ahead of the release of Clooney’s new film Wolfs.

Clooney is best known for her all-over glossy dark-chocolate-hued natural brunette hair, but it was a quick refresh with a £12 box of at-home dye by L’Oréal Paris that helped her to steal the show with a head full of caramel highlights.

The celebrity hairstylist and makeup artist Dimitris Giannetos, who is the ‘his’n’ hers’ stylist to the Clooneys, told Vogue he wanted to give Amal “a classic Italian look” for her time in Venice, drawing inspiration from Italian icon Sophia Loren.

Giannetos applied caramel highlights in Amal’s hair using the box colour Le Color Gloss in Honey Blonde by L’Oréal Paris ahead of her red carpet appearance. The product isn’t available in the UK, but the next best thing is the L’Oreal Paris Preference Core 01 Prague Permanent Hair Dye, £12, which you can buy from Tesco. Giannetos also used the Garnier Fructis Hair Filler Serum to keep her hair looking full and glossy (it’s only available in the US at the moment but it can be shipped to the UK).

Preference Core 01 Prague Permanent Hair Dye, £12 ,L’Oreal Paris

Hair Filler Strength Repair Serum, £15.16, Garnier Fructis

It’s a surprisingly cheap and cheerful hair update for Clooney – a woman with a wardrobe full of designer clothes and multiple homes – even if it was expertly applied by a world-leading colourist.

It seems Amal’s caramel highlights are trending. “We are seeing a lot of brunettes going lighter for the autumn and requesting this ‘salted caramel’ look,” says the leading colourist Anita Rice, from Buller and Rice salons in London. (I’ve been seeing Rice for five years now for my own version of an ever so slightly lightened brunette, albeit not quite caramel.)

So are salted caramel, toffee highlights the newest way to update your brunette hair? The hairstylist and trend forecaster, Tom Smith, thinks so. “Amal has opted for a very bold statement but it’s not a total reinvention of her look, which makes it really effective,” he says. “Her hair has gone as light as it can go while still looking like a true brunette.”

Face-framing ‘bronde’

The way Amal’s colourist has achieved this lightened effect is by adding lighter ‘bronde’ pieces – hairdresser talk for a warm honey blonde – placed around the face. As the colour moves further away from the face, it gets deeper and more ‘natural’ brunette. “This is a trick we use as colourists to make someone’s hair seem lighter without losing their overall identity as a brunette,” adds Smith, who cites Kamala Harris and Jennifer Lopez as other examples of women who have deployed the strategy.

Minimising damage

“The lighter you go the more damaging it is for the condition of your hair, so the trick is to use clever placement of a lighter panel of hair, like Amal’s large face-framing pieces,” adds Rice. “This way you achieve lighter results without compromising the health benefits of the hair. You can then weave finer pieces of highlights through the underneath of the hair, to give an overall lightening look whilst still remaining brunette.”

While box colour is relatively easy to apply for all-over colour, highlights require a much more complex application, so it would be advisable to consult a colourist first.

At home care

Lifting naturally brunette hair colour lighter requires an expert eye; as brunette hair colour is “lifted”, it goes through a warm spectrum of shades such as reds and oranges, so, explains Smith, it’s important to use a toner at home to prevent any brassiness.

He suggests the Fabuloso Cool Brown Colour Intensifying Conditioner by Evo, £26.50. If you would rather leave the toning to the experts, Smith suggests that at the very least use a weekly conditioning mask to keep the colour looking shiny and glossy week after week. I am a big fan of the new Perfect Hair Day High-Shine Gloss by Living Proof, £30, which is an excellent glossing product that makes your hair look more healthy and vibrant in five minutes – box colour or not.

Fabuloso Cool Brown Colour Intensifying Conditioner, £26.50, Evo

Perfect Hair Day High-Shine Gloss, £30, Living Proof