Artist Spotlight: Candy Shaw, the Balay Lama Who Taught America to Pai

Some educators teach a technique. Candy Shaw built a movement around one. Long before balayage was the most requested color service in America, Candy was standing in front of rooms full of skeptical colorists telling them to put down the foils and pick up a paddle. They call her the Balay Lama for a reason.

Born Into the Business

Candy's story starts about as deep inside the industry as you can get. She's the daughter of the late Jamison Shaw, a champion competition hairdresser who built one of Atlanta's most respected salons, and professional makeup artist Sara Shaw. She got behind the chair at sixteen and never left. More than four decades later she owns and runs Jamison Shaw Hairdressers, a fifty chair, third generation, family owned salon that has been an Atlanta institution for over fifty years.

That lineage matters. Candy isn't a personality who picked up education as a side hustle. She's a salon owner who still understands what it takes to keep fifty chairs busy, develop young talent and serve real clients, and she built her teaching on top of that foundation.

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From Atlanta Salon Floor to World Authority on Balayage

Over twenty years ago Candy founded The Academy at Jamison Shaw, an advanced training facility built around two crafts she believed American stylists were underexposed to: French cutting and balayage highlighting. At the time, balayage was a niche technique most US colorists had barely touched. Candy bet her career on it.

Then she went further and built Sunlights Balayage, a product and education company dedicated entirely to the craft of hand painted color. Sunlights developed the clays, tools and systems colorists needed to do the work properly, and backed it with an education engine led by Candy and her Artisan Team of elite educators. It's hard to overstate how much that bet paid off. Balayage went from a French specialty to the backbone of the modern color menu, and a huge share of the colorists doing it well in this country learned from Candy or from someone she trained.

The industry made it official when Candy accepted the NAHA Educator of the Year award in front of a sold out crowd of more than 1,700 beauty professionals. Anyone who has seen her teach knows the speech was probably worth the ticket alone. She also gives back beyond the classroom, serving on the board of Beauty Changes Lives to help fund the next generation's education.

What She's Up To Right Now

This is the part that makes Candy worth spotlighting in 2026 rather than just celebrating as history. She has not slowed down even a little. Sunlights Summer School is rolling through the year with two day French cutting and balayage workshops, with hands on tickets at 299 for a single day or 499 for the two day bundle. There are dates running from spring into late August, including a session on August 23. She's also hosting intimate shadow day experiences at the Atlanta academy, where stylists spend a full day watching her work the floor, plus three day immersive programs with live demos, one on one hands on time with Candy herself and work on live models.

At a point in her career when she could easily coast, she's still choosing the hardest version of education: small rooms, real models, real feedback.

The Lesson for the Rest of Us

Candy Shaw's career is proof that going deep beats going wide. She didn't try to teach everything. She picked a lane, mastered it, built products and education around it, and stayed loyal to it for decades while the industry caught up to her. For any stylist trying to figure out their next chapter, that's the blueprint. Find the thing you believe in before everyone else does, get great at it, then teach it with everything you've got.

Follow Candy at @thebalaylama on Instagram and find her education lineup at sunlightspro.com.