Has anyone gone from coloring their hair dark brown to their natural gray/silver/white color? I might be ready to give up the skunk stripe. My hair grows fast so the root line is prominent within two weeks. My natural color was very dark brown, but I’m 95% white/silver at this point. I can’t decide whether to play around with this myself or go to a salon. (Lol- I know I SHOULD go to a salon, but I am curious to see if this can be done at home.) Has anyone made this change? How long did it take?
Yep. I could no longer color my hair at home due to rotator cuff problems and was also getting concerned about potential allergic reaction since I’ve developed sensitivities to several things in the past few years. You may not want to take the rather drastic action I took, but I had my hair cut super short - think Dame Judi Dench’s hair at its shortest - and spiked it up. Dh and kids were shocked. : ) It felt great. I didn’t need a comb or brush for at least two months.
I am planning the transition to natural after my 50th high school reunion next fall. I definitely will pay to do the transition. I think I will have my stylist do more highlights with more silver so the change is not real drastic. She might have a different idea, and if so, I will go along with what she suggests. So far, she has done a great job which started as rescuing my overprocessed bad haircut which my previous salon had given me.
I got Style Edit…the powdered version…to touch up my roots. I can go easily two months or longer without a coloring…I just touch up the roots with my Style Edit.
If I decided to go to my grayish mess…I would go to my stylist, and have her work me back in the right direction. No way would I try this myself!
I have 3/4 inch of gray and a second inch or gray/light brown going into the dark color since I decided a month ago to not use permanent dye any more. The semi-permanent is rather translucent so I have been using something similar to style edit when I feel the need for covering the roots. It’s also a powder and works great! Can hairdressers give you gray or silver highlights? I haven’t been to a real colorist for many many (10-15?) years.
My hair is a little below shoulder length and I’m waivering on going shorter. I’m a long-haired person and don’t look feminine with short hair.
I did it at home, by just lightening it over time, and keeping it short during the interim. Worked ‘ok’, but I’m sure it would have been better at a salon. But I’m thrifty (ok, cheap). I actually prefer the white. Much easier to take care of. I don’t care for the yellow tinge, however. I’ve tried to determine the cause (anything from pollution, to product, to process), but have yet to find a way to get the beautiful pure white I’ve seen on others. Just read a great book: “Going Grey” by Anne Kreamer. Very enlightening & fun read.
Love the pun…“very enlightening” haha!
Yes a hairdresser can do,grey or silver grey highlights.
I think I would not do this this transition with long hair. I’d go,as short as comfortable. For me…that would be chin length.
I’m just starting to go gray, it’s really just a sprinkling of silvers in my brown hair. However, about eighteen months ago I saw the writing on the wall, so to speak, and decided to stop coloring my hair. For about six months I gutted it out with a long bob and roots (the dyed portion was slightly lighter and more reddish than my natural color), until I finally got sick of it and cut off all the dyed parts to a long pixie. It was fine because I like my hair in a pixie cut, although I’m happy that it’s grown out now. One thing that helped blend the different colors was that the stylist used thinning shears just on the dyed parts. It helped blend them in a bit better because the undyed parts from underneath could show through, instead of just a sharp demarcation between dyed and undyed. I still ended up going short after a while but it was better.
I’ve had a couple friends go to a platinum blonde color first (big surprise first time I saw them!) and then the white didn’t stand out. But I would only do that if you were mostly naturally white. I don’t know if they did it themselves or had professional assistance.
I think you should have a stylist do it!
I have colored my hair for almost 40 years and my stylist thinks I am totally white…not gray or silver. I have thought about going natural but think I would go gradually with stylist’s help, especially with long hair. My hair also grows very fast and I recolor every three weeks and use the powdered Color WOW after two weeks on my part and temples. We only color the roots most of the time. My stylist, H and friends think I look too young to go white and also many think my coloring would not work with the white hair. H does not want me to stop coloring even though he is totally silver! 
I think I will wait a few more years to try a transition.
I recently had a very bad reaction to my hair dye, and a trip to the allergist revealed that I am VERY allergic to PPD - the chemical that makes dye permanent. I have to stay away from all dark dyes, so my hairdresser did blonde foil highlights for me a couple weeks ago. I have been getting tons of compliments. They will only have to be done 2-3 times a year. My hair will be able to transition to its now-natural silver when I am ready to make that change (for now, we’ll keep more blonde in it).
I have short hair, but I am not going really short … I don’t like that look for me. A friend did it when she decided to go gray naturally, and now she has amazing long, silver hair.
I would definitely go to a salon! Is there a way for them to strip your previous color out to see what going on underneath? If you’re mostly white I think taking it blond would be an easier first step. A pro would be able to evaluate the best way to do it.
Maybe the shift, at first, is to a much lighter brown, so the roots don’t seem so prominent? A stylist may be able to strip out the darker color enough, then re-do it to the lighter (depending on the dye.) But, maybe you want to go try on a grey or white wig first, see how you like the look. I’ve got a friend whose hair is short/spiky, a hip look. But she feels the all white she went to, (a style choice, not frustration,) is making her look older in her work context.
I guess I’m the rare bird that went cold turkey. It looked bad for a while but only my family and closest friends gave me grief! I had had enough of toxic hair dyes which were never “me” to begin with, not to mention the expense and living 20 miles from the nearest salon and working fulltime. My hair is worn straight to below my shoulders and no way I was going short at this point in my life.
That was probably 10 years ago. Now, I get MANY compliments on my natural hair color, including from every stylist who has cut my hair in the last 10 years. My hair, to me, looks all grayish white, but in reality it has a mix of colors and has sort of natural highlighting.
I decided to go natural too. My last dye job was 3 weeks ago. I’m tired of the itchiness after, and the gray showing again in a few weeks (I don’t use a permanent color because of sensitivities). I’ll have to see how it grows out before I decide how I will manage this transition. My curly hair is chin length when dry and I don’t really want to go shorter than that. I told my hairdresser that I was planning to stop coloring my hair, so he’ll have some ideas for what to do until the gray comes in totally.
I slowly went to flesh colored
Great thread - I’ve been wondering the same thing!
I colored my hair for 10 years- from my 30s to 40s. I really got tired of spending the money and let my hair grow naturally. It took about 6-8 months to get all the brown out. My hairdresser suggested keeping it short – the longer your hair, the heavier it is and the more you see the roots.
That was 10 years ago. My hair is mostly gray/silver and the color I use today is purple, green or blue! Love doing the bright colors, it isn’t as depressing to see the gray roots. Right now I have just the front ‘bangs’ a deep purple color.
As far as removing the brassiness from gray hair- that is buildup from your hair products. You need to use the purple shampoo like this:
I have used this brand and the Clairol Shimmer lights. Use once a week or when you see the dullness return. If you use it too often it will turn your hair purple.
They actually make silver hair dye. I’ve seen girls on campus with their hair colored silver. Not sure if I will go this route any time soon, since I went gray at 26 and have colored my hair ever since. Just switched to a Schwarzkopf Keratin color after using L’Oréal for years and was really pleased with the results although it was somewhat darker than I expected. I look too old if I let it grow out.
Sadly, D is finding that she already has more than a few gray hairs at 22 
Thank you for the shampoo link. H has told me for years to go natural - but I’ve been almost all white for 15 years! Also H looks 10 years younger than he is so I’m likely to look Iike his mother.
You can also find a thread somewhere on here where I swore I would have black hair till I’m 90. Lol. Thank goodness we are allowed to change our minds. I’m not currently working so it seems like the perfect time to experiment.
So either I go to a salon and get grey highlights, and keep some dark, or I do Color Oops and take off the dark dye as much as possible all over and do light ash blonde/brown semi-permanent after to tone it a bit.