Thing I hate about overdone (and in Lydia’s case, badly done) balayage is that it does the opposite of what it’s intended to do. Balayage was created as an anti-aging color technique that gave adult hair the appearance of children’s hair, which can have far more natural highlights particularly at the crown and temples. Problem for Lydia is she never had that hair growing up. Her hair has always been dark and likely monotone. So putting on grey ash blonde balayage makes her look extremely old instead. Her skin tone (both: the extremely pale and rosy natural tone and her orange sludge) don’t favor the ash bleach blonde she’s trying to carry. In fact, I think she’d look a heck of a lot better not fighting her natural red and leaning into a deep auburn. Nicky was the only hairdresser who made her blonde tolerable.