“Is it possible to have gray hair?”

gray hair

I hear many of the same questions as I get consults coming into the salon. Here are a few of the questions that I get:

“will I look old if I try gray hair?”

“am I to young for gray hair?”

“how long before I can just let my hair grow out white?”

“can I stop coloring my gray hair?”

“is it easy to go from blonde to gray hair?”

“what if I have dark brown hair that I want to grow my gray hair out?”

These are just some of the questions our stylists have to answer during their consultations. No matter if you are young or mature (hee hee) the processes are still the same. We need to evaluate the health of your hair before we start any processes. If your hair is super dark we have to remove the color at the scalp and the mid length and ends to make the palette even in order to color.

Going from dark to white is a challenging process and has to be done safely. Hair can break off. Could thin out too. Part of the conversation taking our clients from orangy highlighted hair to a gray platinum or mauve shades does require a period of time to process meaning lifting and toning.

Do you want to stop coloring you hair? Maybe you do but if you let the color grow out to 1/2 way down your head that leaves you with dark brown roots with some gray in it that doesn’t look very good. I recommend talking about creating a look that can be grown out looking stylish vs growth that looks unkempt.

Tones of gray hair will look different on every single skin tone. We recommend that you choose between the darker steel tones vs platinum depending on whether you wear makeup or not. The grow out color will help us choose what is best for you plus how far your hair will lift up from the natural or orangy base color. So many factors go into creating the correct look for your skin, your lifestyle and if you can style your hair curly or straight.

Many of our clients have been surprised that they have had to spend hours day 1 just sitting and lightening up (bleaching) till we get the right tone to work with. Sometimes we even do day 2 lightening up again safely. We always consider the porosity of the hair. the ability of the hair to hold the newest gray shade and what can we do to maintain it.

Often times, our clients think its a cheap process and once you bleach out the hair, they think that we just pop a color on and that’s it till next month. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality the client is back in the salon in about 3 – 4 weeks for a toner or what we call a color balance to keep the tone and to check on the integrity of the hair. If the hair has grown out 1/4″ we have to rebleach the hair and then tone again.

If the client likes a darker root like my daughter Alex, we will leave the root along until she has a larger regrowth then we would tone down the root color and color balance the ends again to keep it in tip top shape gray hair. In this instance, it did take two days 16 hours to get Alex’s hair the way it needed to be to reach the gray tones.  Her scalp color is a brown violet color with 4 shades of gray violet, darker gray, platinum gray and a rose color.

Many shades of gray hair

If the hair is fragile, we will offer to do a Brazilian Blowout to seal the ends together on fragile hair. In most cases this will protect the hair and keep the gray hair color in longer.

I love that my daughter is willing to try new colors for the trends 2018. It is easy to go darker but not as easy as she thought it would be to keep her hair on the gray scale of color.

She has to use toners, conditioning treatments to keep her hair the same tone. She has baby fine hair so that makes it a little sketchy when coloring her hair with bleaches and toners. We also use a product such as Wella to help mend the bonds of her hair. Wella has superior products that are designed to rebond the hair during the processing of the bleaching or toning process.

Interested in trying  a new hair color such as gray? Give us a call at 717.846.4424.