To blend that line of demarcation, ask your hairstylist to paint babylights (very thin highlights) throughout your hair. This will help to blend those grays in with your colored hair, creating an all-over salt and pepper effect. For many people, this is the easiest way of transitioning to gray hair from dyed hair.
If you decide to grow out your grays without additional salon or at-home hair color, Aral suggests covering up the new growth with a root touch-up product, like GH Beauty Award winner Clairol Temporary Root Touch-Up.
Apply Hair Color With Foils
If you're trying to transition to gray hair, you want to avoid an all-over dye job. Instead, have your colorist apply your hair color with foils — much like applying highlights, except you won't be lightening your hair. This will simply help you transition between the two shades seamlessly.
For grey hair coverage, we generally recommend that you aim to color slightly lighter than the natural hair color level of your client. In this case we would suggest you go for a color starting in level 6 (Dark Blonde) or 7 (Blonde).
Neutral shades like soft blonde, mushroom brown, light copper, and caramel blonde balayage are the easiest to blend gray into (and maintain over time without wanting to shave your hair off).
Gray blending is a subtle hair color application that oscillates between highlights and balayage. Like a game of chiaroscuro, the colorist will first lighten large sections of hair with a light balayage, then accentuate the effect on a few finer strands to blend in the gray hair naturally present.
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.
But how to blend gray hair into brown or naturally dark hair seamlessly? Less saturated shades of highlights and dyes can make the gray strands less visible. Butterscotch, light auburn, golden brown, ash brown, and pale brunettes are some of the best shades to conceal them.
It will only deposit the blonde color on the gray hairs, turning them into golden highlights.
Just like the hair on the head, the hair on the rest of the body, including the pubic area, is subject to graying. As people age, their skin produces less melanin. Melanin is the pigment responsible for giving skin and hair its color.
2. And your hair might feel healthier. While hair dyes and techniques have come a long way since their follicle-frying beginnings, they do still leave some damage. Taking a hiatus from color will help your hair return to its previous state--especially as dyed ends get chopped off.
The pigment in our hair is caused by melanin— the same pigment that is also responsible for our skin color. Gray hair is caused by a loss in melanin, whereas white hair does not have any melanin at all. As you age, your hair produces less and less melanin that leads your hair to appear gray, and then eventually white.
The timing between dyes, according to Lint, is roughly every four to six weeks. If you're stretching that time gap pretty thin, however, there are methods to cover your gray roots in the meantime. "There are lots of products, such as powder or makeup, that cover your gray and then wash out when shampooed," says Lint.
According to hair biology experts and styling experts alike, grey hair is more resistant to color than younger hair because of its texture. The relative lack of natural oils in the hair compared to younger hair make it a rougher surface that tends to reject the color being applied, especially around the roots.
Depending on the thickness of the color or length of the hair, one of Martin's gray hair transformations can take anywhere from six to 14 hours. In terms of technique, it's all based on the pattern of the roots and how light or dark a client's hair is.
In terms of gray coverage, foil highlights are typically used when a client is trying to avoid the use of permanent color. Instead of dying the grays to match the overall base color, using highlights to lighten the surrounding hair allows the grays to blend into the base color, providing a much more natural look.
Gray Magic adds concentrate red and yellow with wetting agents to replace the lost color pigment and moisture, to 'lock-in' hair color. When added to shampoos or conditioners, will prevent fading and oxidtation for tinted red or warm colors (10 drops per ounce of shampoo or conditioner).
Lowlights, which, unlike highlights are actually a few shades darker than your hair, bring out the most natural look versus using brighter traditional highlights, says Michael Canalé, Jennifer Aniston's longtime colorist and creator of hair care line Canalé.
Caramel, honey, gold, copper, and strawberry give a healthy brightness that makes us look and feel younger. (Framing your face with lighter shades draws the eye away from any complexion concerns, as well.)
Colors like butterscotch, light auburn and golden brown, or ash brown for those with a cool skin tone, are all versatile brunette shades that aren't too dark and are some of the best hair colors to hide gray.