For blonde hair with natural grays, you can play with pearl shades. Alternately, for brunettes, try working in darker tones for the most complementary results. For natural redheads, apply blonde hues.
If you are a natural brunette, you'll want to blend your greys with darker lowlights. For natural blondes, you should add highlights and lowlights ranging from pearl to medium blonde. And if you are a natural redhead, a range of brown and blonde highlights and lowlights will enhance your grey locks best.
Chocolate, deep caramel and toffee, rich auburn reds and deep blonde tones all work, but try to avoid going too light or insipid feeling with colours. Grey is usually naturally warm, and it's usually best to embrace and even enhance this rather than trying to cool things down with blue tones.
If you add the right hair colour, your 'grey' hair will act as highlights, giving you a completely new look that will get you noticed for all the right reasons. Professional colourists usually recommend a darker shade for your roots and a lighter shade that matches your natural hair for the rest.
While your parents may scare you saying that excessive dying will turn your hair grey, it is as good as a classic old wives tale. It is true that colouring your hair makes it dull and more vulnerable to breakage and loss but, it does not cause premature greying.
Along with the changes in pigmentation, grey hairs can also undergo structural changes Grey hair is often also coarser. The outer cuticle layer of greys can be more tightly packed and layered, making them resistant to colour absorption.
Along with blondes, redheads are the most likely to gray (or, in reality, white) early on, since their hair already lacks the pigment.
The good news is, unlike grey on dark hair, grey on blonde tends to blend a little more seamlessly, so when the post-colour regrowth comes through, clients get a softer, subtler line.
"The best techniques for covering grays all depend on the lightness or darkness of your hair and what percentage gray you have," Lee explains. "Someone with a few grays can get away with highlights or demi-permanent hair color. If they are 75 to 100 percent gray, they need permanent dye."
Root Spray
Root spray can be gently applied on your graying roots. This is a temporary root touch up that will last until you wash your hair. With a good root spray, you should be able to avoid buildup and maintain healthy hair.
'The rule of thumb being match cool greys with other "chill" colours such as blue, pale greens and cool white. And match darker grey tones with warm tones such as burnt orange, mustard, and teal.' We asked interior stylists and design experts to share their tips on the best colours that go with grey.
You want to avoid shades that are too similar to your natural coloring; beiges, creams, off-whites, stone grays, taupes, etc. These colors will only wash you out and emphasize your gray tones.
Opt for cool, ashy tones to emphasize grays, or choose golden and beige pigments to blend them. Dark hair can also make a striking statement with the salt and pepper technique, AKA highlighting 'pepper' strands while painting out 'salty' ones using lowlights.
Gloss treatments and violet toner can help keep hair shiny silver. If you don't want to visit the salon for toner, you can do a bit of toning at home. "Use a purple shampoo or conditioner to counteract the brassy undertones in your white hair," Dr. Chacon suggested.
ACV can help to brighten gray hair by removing buildup and residue that can dull its shine. It can also help to balance the pH level of your scalp, which can improve overall hair health. To use apple cider vinegar on gray hair, you can create a simple rinse by mixing one part ACV with two parts water.
There are three reasons we recommend blonde highlights Opens in a new tab when covering grays. First up, the difference between blonde and silver shades is subtle, so gray roots won't appear as visible - even if it's been six to eight weeks since you last went to the salon.
But in lowlighting gray hair, you can dye even the stray silver strands as well. As for the overall process, highlights take longer to do and need more maintenance compared to lowlights. Ultimately, we prefer lowlights for gray hair.
A color trend to tame grey hairs
Ash blonde is THE perfect transitional color, following the appearance of any first gray hairs. It's an elegant way to tackle this problem as it allows you to avoid having obvious roots or demarcations which are too distinct.
Grey blending is a subtle way of handling your greying hair. It is an approach that blends the grey with colours similar to your natural hair tone. It's an option that allows you to embrace and enhance your greying hair, rather than hiding it. Your natural hair colour is the inspiration for the final effect.
It depends on the shade of grey. With a white-ish grey you might get away with putting blonde on it; if you're a steely grey it won't cover it. Highlights might be better; you could blend the grey in for a silver-blonde look.
Naturally occurring hydrogen peroxide can also build up in the hair, bleaching the color. Typically, white people start going gray in their mid-30s, Asians in their late 30s, and Blacks in their mid-40s. Half of all people have a significant amount of gray hair by the time they turn 50.
"My roots grew about an inch, and I started noticing the salt-and-pepper pattern of my natural hair and toying with the idea of going gray." There's no hard-and-fast rule about when (or if!) you should stop coloring your hair and go gray; it's ultimately a personal choice.
"As we age, there are fewer pigment-producing cells at the root of the hair follicle," Danbury, Connecticut dermatologist Mona Gohara, MD tells me. "This is a predestined thing—it's genetic and can happen at any age." With that said, she cites the late thirties as the time at which pubic hair typically begins to gray.