I stopped coloring my hair when there was “enough” silver to look like silver highlights vs a bunch of grey hairs.
It was painless for me because I had very short hair at the time. If I had long hair, I’d get an opinion with a colorist at at salon.
Good luck! I love being free of coloring and root touch ups.
For a number of reasons, I went without coloring my hair for over a year. It was to the point that with a really short cut I would have been all gray.
The tipping point was my mom’s funeral & I ended up with a devacurl cut and a good color with caramel foil highlights. The plan is to stay with this and then transition to gray with the stylist’s help once I retire in a year or so. I don’t know if my original plan of cold turkey with a short short cut will work or not.
So I decided to use my head as a science experiment. I’ve been working on this project since the beginning of May.
First, I used two boxes of Color Oops to strip out as much of the dark dye as possible. It lightened my hair to a medium brown with an orange tinge.
After that, I used Radical Bleach Kit Beyond the Zone Lightener (from Sally’s) to bleach my hair lighter. It was still a light brown with brassiness, so I used a semi-perm Natural Instincts Dark Blonde Coastal Dune so I could look normal for a few weeks before more bleaching. This color looked pretty nice, to be honest. If I wanted to stay at an intermediate color, I would continue to use this. It is maybe still a little too golden/red toned for my taste, but it looked nice.
After a few weeks, I did another bleaching session and was able to get my hair really light. There are a few sections underneath that are still more strawberry blonde, and I may redo those specific areas at some point. After reaching very light blonde, I used Wella Color Charm T14 to tone the remaining gold/orange out.
So now I am a blonde. It’s interesting since I’ve always had very dark brown hair. I’m watching to see what happens as my roots grow out. It looks like I have more dark hair than I previously thought (although I’m definitely 75-80% gray/white). H likes it. I would startle when looking in the mirror each morning for the first week or so. Now I’m sort of used to it. I think I’ll keep it as a mixture of blonde and silver for a while. My eyebrows are still very dark, though thinning. I’m using a medium brown powder to fill them in and it helps them blend in a little better with my hair.
My hair is very thick and very course, so although it is probably pretty damaged from the bleaching, it doesn’t feel much different to me. I did use a deep conditioner after bleaching, and I did buy some Shimmer Lights purple shampoo, which is so cool. I had never known it existed before. It does work to tone out brassiness.
The most fun I’ve had with it was showing up to pick up S from college and hearing “Nice hair” when he saw me. lol.
Thanks for all the ideas and recommendations! I will eventually have a professional fix it up a little nicer but I’m happy to have the very dark color gone.
This is an interesting thread. I went from no gray to many gray strands in th course of a year. I’ve only dyed my hair a few times in my life and it itches like crazy afterwards which I’m sure means I have an allergy to dyes. I think I’m gonna let gray. I don’t have the skunk stripe. My entire strands gray so it looks like I have shimmering highlights. My husband and D1 love it. I’m not so sure as my husband looks incredibly young. At my daughters HS graduation many kids came up to him to ask how he had been doing. They thought he was her brother who graduated two years earlier.
Sounds like my husband! He’s more than 8 years older than I am, but he looks younger! No fair.
Mine is two years younger but he seriously could pass for late twenties. He still gets carded sometimes! He gets so mad!
Another natural one here … mostly black with a lot of silver sneaking in.
My dad, who died young, had only a few silver strands when he died. My mother, who died at 75, didn’t have as much grey as you’d think in someone of her age. So I’m hoping I’ll hang onto the black as long as I can.
I did color it for a bit in my late 30s, but got lazy and cheap and gave up.
My hair is really curly so the grey is not as noticeable as when I straighten it.
I last had my hair dyed 12 weeks ago, and decided then I would be taking a break, maybe permanently. I wasn’t thrilled with the coverage I was getting anyway and didn’t want to use stronger formulas.
DH has been going gray since his 20’s. S2, who’s 27, barely remembers him with brown hair. So DH won’t look younger than me.
The hair immediately around my face has no gray at all, but the crown is where the gray is predominant. I may use one of the root cover-ups if I have a special event, but otherwise I’m just letting it go. I may opt for blond highlights after it’s all gray. I haven’t been blond since I was 4or 5.
I also went cold turkey. It took a while for my hair to grow out, but I’m so glad I just went gray. It’s so much easier and less expensive.
It’s too bad baldness isn’t fashionable for women. My 31-year-old son is almost entirely bald, and he shaves off what little hair he has left. He probably won’t even notice when his few remaining hairs turn gray. Talk about easy!
I am a few months into slowly embracing my grayness … not really planned, but a sudden allergy to hair dye (and sunscreen, and the sides of my glasses …) forced the decision. My hairdresser did blonde foil highlights, and I really like it. I am late for a haircut, and I can really see the line of gray in my part. If I keep it cut regularly, my shortish (not short-short) hair looks really good. I will eventually stop the highlights, but I want the change to be gradual.