Gray Hair Management

[laurack]

I (41) stopped getting highlights and have grown my hair out. I was sick of the time and cost and figured why not embrace my brunette locks! Well now that it’s grown out I am seeing a few grays so I’m not sure what I’ll do. I won’t be embracing it but I’m not sure how yet if it will be easier to start getting highlights again or to do an all over color. My hair is a boring/normal/medium brown. It’s still just a sprinkling but in the next year I may start doing something.

It got so expensive to get highlights! I guess like everything else it’s gone up a lot. A full head is like 250 here before tip so it’s really 300. But I’m thinking if I do go highlights a partial would do to blend the greys.

My mother who is 70 has only probably 25% grey hair so I’m hoping I am a “slow grayer”. However my dad was fully grey before 30 so who knows.

[sadlebred]

Dec 24, 2023 11:51:11 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

Dec 23, 2023 22:14:18 GMT -5 sadlebred said:

I'm UAF....so it' doesn't matter. I embrace the greys. I'd say my hair is less than 10% grey. My mom still had brown and silver hair into her early 70s. She still wasn't fully grey when she passed.

I’ve been trying to figure this out on my own, but can’t. What is UAF?”

Ugly AF for Ugly as **ck.....

[underwaterrhymes]

Dec 24, 2023 17:31:51 GMT -5 sadlebred said:

Dec 24, 2023 11:51:11 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

I’ve been trying to figure this out on my own, but can’t. What is UAF?”

Ugly AF for Ugly as **ck.....

😩 I was hoping it didn’t mean this. ❤️❤️ I don’t know you, but don’t think this is likely the case.

[thebreakfastclub]

Dec 24, 2023 13:00:23 GMT -5 laurack said:

I (41) stopped getting highlights and have grown my hair out. I was sick of the time and cost and figured why not embrace my brunette locks! Well now that it’s grown out I am seeing a few grays so I’m not sure what I’ll do. I won’t be embracing it but I’m not sure how yet if it will be easier to start getting highlights again or to do an all over color. My hair is a boring/normal/medium brown. It’s still just a sprinkling but in the next year I may start doing something.

It got so expensive to get highlights! I guess like everything else it’s gone up a lot. A full head is like 250 here before tip so it’s really 300. But I’m thinking if I do go highlights a partial would do to blend the greys.

My mother who is 70 has only probably 25% grey hair so I’m hoping I am a “slow grayer”. However my dad was fully grey before 30 so who knows.

I have dark blond/brownish hair and I only get partial highlights.

I get both blond and copper woven in which definitely covers my greys at 47.

[penelope]

I’m 48. I gradually went lighter by incorporating more highlights and a lighter shade for root touch ups. I can see my grey at about 5 weeks under good light, but push a root touch up to 7. It’s way better than when it was its darker color.

I cut off all my hair during the pandemic, I had a pixie in my 20’s so I thought I knew what I was getting into. I wasn’t grey in my 20’s tho, so having your sides and back shaved to a 1/4 inch, then having it grow meant I was mostly grey within about 4 weeks, but only in patchy areas. It was awful and I was using spray color on the bigger patches of grey on my sides. That lasted two cuts and I started growing it out.

I am not ready to go grey either! Not only do i just not want to, I’m scared of what I will wind up with if it was so patchy before.

[sju]

I also have dark, thick, coarse hair. A couple stylists recommended balayage over highlights so I could do root touch ups easily. They were right. Last time I had some teasylights done to blend but I am going dark. I am the worst at making hair appointments so that I have been using the L’Oréal spray or at home touch ups (mainly top and sides) . 

[mrsukyankee]

penelope, you'd be amazed. When I began to grow out my grey from a pixie, it looked very patchy as well, but once it was actually grown out, it looked so good.

[wanderlustmom]

I am 49 and several of my friends have grown their gray out. They look really good and now only pay for occasional hair cuts.

I have thin medium to light brown hair that doesn’t gray fast so I’ve been sticking with partial highlights every three months and I never see any gray but that’s because my hair has some blonde and grows so slow. I hate sitting there that long even for the partials.

My husband and sister have dark hair so their gray is in more and it looks really good.

All that to say I haven’t made my mind up yet but I think about what I could do with that money. It’s definitely a society issue. If more people embrace gray, we will feel better. I’m currently part of the problem by covering mine.

[stemmie]

There are so many pieces to this that are individualized in terms of what works and how quickly you want to be in your new color.

I don't personally think gray is aging. In fact, traditional color selection says that women should go "lighter" as it is more flattering to older skin that may have wrinkles, less color, sallowness, or uneven tone from sun damage. Nothing is less flattering than a person of a "certain" age who goes very dark. That's aging and not gracefully.

I feel like it can be easier to grown out gray (which is really white- a lack of pigment) if it crops up in a desirable pattern. My BFF is a pale skinned Italian with dark brown hair whose grays came in as a covetable salt & pepper. I don't think it ages her, but her husband preferred she dye because he wanted her to look like she always did. She dyed it for about 5 years until the pandemic and grew it out a second time. She grew it out cold turkey both times. She has a shortish bob and it did look kind of obvious. It was a lighter silvery mix then and he embraced it. She has lovely skin because she throws a lot of money at it with peels, injections and fillers so even bare-faced she looks amazing. The only real adjustment she made was switching her eyebrows (which are her worst feature) to a gray pencil (Benefit, I think)

I have darkish ash blond hair. My whites have come in like my mom's did. I didn't have my first white until I was 40-ish. I started with streaks at my temples which I blended with the highlights I always got anyway. Over time, the patches got larger and I reduced the number of foils I got to just around my face. These days I do a very light balaylage money pieces and a few streaks just above my ears. Since my last cut, I have noticed an increase in whites more dispersed through my scalp. I'll ask my stylist where he thinks we should go with this next thing. He's weaning me down to very little color because I hate when my highlights pull gold between appointments. I go every 8 weeks or so. I meet my friend and we do cuts downtown and have dinner after so it gets $$$.

Based on what you're saying, I might ditch the foils. They tend not to bring as much to the party with darker, richer hair colors. One thing my stylist does for someone not ready to embrace the gray is to do an all over demi color (which doesn't "lift" color) as an all-over and then root touch-up. This colors the whites but leaves them a bit lighter which gives dimension and grows out gently. My niece does this. Her hair is a medium brown and her person does a slightly lighter more golden brown which is pretty. It's less expensive and time consuming than foils, so you could do it more often for about the same price especially if you maintain a current cut schedule.

[melmel4854]

Dec 24, 2023 18:31:05 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

Dec 24, 2023 17:31:51 GMT -5 sadlebred said:

Ugly AF for Ugly as **ck.....

😩 I was hoping it didn’t mean this. ❤️❤️ I don’t know you, but don’t think this is likely the case.

It isn't true! I know what she looks like; we are close friends! She is very pretty.

[melmel4854]

sadlebred,

I will not tolerate this UAF stuff! It isn't true.

[laterz]

Dec 23, 2023 16:32:48 GMT -5 mrsukyankee said:

Dec 23, 2023 11:40:21 GMT -5 laterz said:

I want to embrace gray hair - but realistically, it's going to make me look much older than I am, and I just can't stomach it yet.

No. It won't. It's such a myth. Grey hair isn't ageing at all. It's what you THINK is ageing but now people of all ages are wearing their hair grey and many of us are doing it naturally (I know 30 year olds who have gone au naturel...they do not look 'older'). I look younger with my salt and pepper than I did with the artificial colour that I had to do every 4 weeks. I promise you, it's a myth.

Coming back to this.  I haven't dyed my hair since Dec 8.  I can't promise I'm not going to go back, but I'm finding I don't hate it when I actually do my hair (it's curly).  Its much more obvious when i'm lazy.  But I figure it can't hurt to see what the color and pattern looks like.  

[TR]

Mar 24, 2024 19:14:15 GMT -5 laterz said:

Dec 23, 2023 16:32:48 GMT -5 mrsukyankee said:

No. It won't. It's such a myth. Grey hair isn't ageing at all. It's what you THINK is ageing but now people of all ages are wearing their hair grey and many of us are doing it naturally (I know 30 year olds who have gone au naturel...they do not look 'older'). I look younger with my salt and pepper than I did with the artificial colour that I had to do every 4 weeks. I promise you, it's a myth.

Coming back to this.  I haven't dyed my hair since Dec 8.  I can't promise I'm not going to go back, but I'm finding I don't hate it when I actually do my hair (it's curly).  It’s much more obvious when i'm lazy.  But I figure it can't hurt to see what the color and pattern looks like.  

Welcome! I stopped doing a base color in Jan 2020 and just did highlights. I did end up going pretty blonde there for awhile, but now I’m back to my natural color (which is a cool medium brown) and honestly the gray isn’t as much as I felt like it was when I was just looking at re-growth, if that makes sense. It blends much better now that it’s all grown out together.

[sdlaura]

I used to be really blonde but then I felt like the bleach was damaging my hair. So now I have gone back toward my natural brown and get highlights with a lighter color but not bleach. I’m seeing more gray but not a ton yet (I’m 42).

I have lots of respect for women who embrace the gray but I don’t think I’ll be one of them. Part of it may be living in looks-conscious SoCal and part of it may be that my youngest is only 3 years old. I don’t feel ready to have gray hair.

[picksthemusic]

I haven't dyed my hair in over a decade. I have dark hair, but am about half silver now. I'm lucky that my silvers are just that - silver/white. It's a good salt/pepper mix and I'm happy with how it looks. I would say that the grow-out phase is really tough, and it can seem like it 'ages' you since you're so used to your color the way it is now. But once you have it grown out, you see that it is usually very flattering, especially with a good cut. I sometimes get asked if I get my hair highlighted, because of how it grows in, and I tell them Mother Nature did it for me.

Good luck - and hopefully you can find a solution that works for you.