Say “YAY” To Grey – Our guide to embracing your grey hair! (or not)

Love them or hate them, there’s no avoiding grey hairs. As we age our hair begins to contain fewer pigment molecules within our hair strands, and hairs become more translucent. This gradual reduction of melanin in our hair is what causes it to appear duller as we age, even before we notice those real grey/silver/white strands.

There are several ways to boost your hair colour as your hair transitions to grey. How we tackle your hair colour will depend on whether you want to embrace the grey, blend the grey, or hide the grey.

Embracing Greys

Going grey naturally is pretty uncommon these days. Most of us have been colouring our hair since before we ever had a hint of grey. If you know that you definitely want to embrace your grey hair from the start you can simply stop having your hair coloured and let it grow out.

Using a purple shampoo or having a monthly toning appointment can help keep your hair looking shiny and bright as your natural colour grows and will soften the transition. It will also help prevent dull or ‘dirty’ looking grey during that pesky in-between stage.

If you’re already 50-100% grey but you’ve been colouring your hair with an all over tint several shades darker, you may wish to have all that colour removed with a lightening service and then toned to match your natural shade as best as possible. This method isn’t for the faint hearted, it can take a few appointments to completely remove that old colour and it can be quite a shock to go from full-coverage to fully-grey.

That being said, the transformation is really quite incredible and our clients often feel a huge relief that the cost, frequency and commitment of their usual colour maintenance appointments are massively reduced. Even better than that (and somewhat ironically) we think that our clients who have undergone this transformation look 10 years younger by embracing the natural beauty of their grey hair!

Blending Greys

Grey blending is the most popular choice when it comes to grey hair! Most commonly this is achieved with highlighting services.

For clients who have up to 50% silver strands, this usually means lightening the hair throughout in woven packets. This helps blend your natural ‘wisdom highlights’ with additional light blonde strands to soften their appearance throughout your hair. It also minimises the appearance of obvious grey regrowth.

For clients who are 50-100% grey we usually add a few tones to the hair; a couple of blonde shades as well as a slightly darker lowlight for a soft, natural finish.

Highlights mean that not all of your hair is coloured; there will be lots of blended dimension and your greys are camouflaged, rather than covered. Having a toner appointment between highlighting services and using a purple shampoo once a week can help give those blonde and grey strands an extra boost of shine to prevent dullness and brassiness.

Covering Greys

Not everyone loves what mother nature has given them – embracing grey hair isn’t for everyone! Fear not, we’ll have you covered.

Tinting grey hair is a little trickier than usual. This is because there are very few pigment molecules in the hair for the artificial hair colour molecules to work with or grab onto. Standard semi-permanent or permanent hair dye, even professional products, will fade faster and will have a translucent appearance on grey strands.

If you have just a few greys, this isn’t usually too noticeable and you can go ahead and have a full head tint with any of our Matrix colour products. So long as you keep up with regular appointments those translucent strands will go undetected!

If your hair is particularly stubborn or very grey/white/silver you’ll need a hair colour product formulated specially for grey hair. We use Matrix’s Extra-Coverage range here at Meaders. These products have excellent coverage and will totally eliminate every last twinkle of grey. Due to the nature of this specialist product the colour options are more limited and tend toward very neutral shades so they can maintain their place within the hair shaft. We find this can be balanced with a semi-permanent tone over the top to add a boost of shine or extra warmth to your tint.

If you’re opting for a tone which is a stark contrast to your natural shade you may find you need your regrowth coloured more frequently than usual – this is true for everyone, not just for those covering greys!

If you want full coverage but love the highlighted look, we can add a tint between your woven packets so that every single hair is transformed and all those greys are banished. This is a really great option to softens the disparity of your regrowth between visits, compared with an all over tint.

Still not sure? We’d love to discuss your hair concerns and goals with you! Start you new hair journey now and book a colour consultation HERE.