Growing in the grey

First published May 2020 – most recent update (towards end of article) March 2023

With so many people missing their hairdresser during this surreal period of lockdown, it seems a good time to write a blog about growing in the grey. 

My hair has been grey (I prefer white or silver) for five years – actually a lot longer, but of course I coloured it for around 30 years. I don’t like the expression salt and pepper, although in essence it is a combination of salt and black pepper that makes it the colour my hair is today. All those years of wanting highlights and lowlights – now I have them naturally.

Many young women are these days opting to colour their hair various hues of grey, so it is quite the thing. However, going grey naturally doesn’t happen overnight, and the in-between stage is the one many of us dread most.

I found white hairs in my teenage years. In fact, they were bad enough to earn me the nickname ‘granny greybeard’ from one of the more unkind boys at school. My hair was very dark, and I don’t recall being terribly annoyed about the greys during my university days. But when I finished and returned home to live and work, I decided to get my long hair cut short and coloured. (A sort of purple hue – yuk!) As I was leaving the salon, the hairdresser said to me: ‘You’ll probably never want long hair again.’ Well, that was a red rag to a bull – and most of my life I have had long hair. Exceptions were after major events in my life, particularly after the birth of each of my three children. But I always grew it back.

Sadly, colouring it to hide the grey that first time when I was just 22 was the start of the slippery slope. At first I coloured it just occasionally, but as time went on, the need to cover the roots became more and more frequent. In the last 10 years before ditching the dye, I was having to colour it every three weeks. Salon visits were expensive and time consuming, so I often did it myself. This resulted in my hair being various degrees of dark – often jet black at the ends from layer upon layer of colour, and a lighter shade of brown at the roots, where the dye hadn’t quite been strong enough to cover the increasing number of white hairs I was sprouting.

Colouring your hair yourself can be stressful. In my 20s, I needed to cover my roots when staying in a hostel in Chung King Mansions in Hong Kong during a year-long backpacking trip. This was a maze of high rise buildings housing all sorts of homes, businesses and hostels. I found a hair dye, applied it, but when I went to wash it out discovered there was no water in our ‘ensuite’ bathroom (ie wooden-framed cubbyhole with showerhead over the toilet). The hostel owner said I could use a bathroom in his other hostel. The only problem was we were on a fairly high floor, and the other hostel was eight stories down. I had to go via the large public lift, which was very busy, with a towel wrapped round my shoulders and evil smelling black liquid oozing down my face and neck and pretend this was just a normal thing to do. A memorable experience!

As the years passed, I would occasionally mention to a hairdresser that I was considering going grey. They looked at me aghast – I was far too young to be grey. And so I continued to ask them to cover up my real hair.

On two occasions I allowed my hair to be bleached and recoloured a lighter shade. The first time I had it coloured a lighter brown and needless to say, the grey roots (mingled with black for I still had a fair amount of that) really showed through. The combination of colours was not good, so we went back to dark brown. On the second occasion, when I was 49, I again had my hair stripped and recoloured blonde! I was convinced that the grey regrowth would blend beautifully with my ash blonde locks. Not a bit of it! Ash blond quickly went to orange, the grey remained grey, and the condition of my hair was awful – the process completely destroyed it, it was dry, brittle, frizzy, my curl had been killed – not a good look, as the pictures below prove. I would strenuously recommend you never to have your hair stripped. Horrible process.

Finally one day in January 2016 I decided – I am going to do it. I am going to go grey. And (for once in my life) I stuck at it.

I did consider asking for sponsorship to get it all shaved off for charity once I had a little grey on the roots. I opted not to do this because I personally felt I might give the impression that I had lost my hair through chemotherapy and was trying to grow it back and felt that would be very disrespectful of those brave ladies who are in that position as a result of cancer treatment.

Some blogs and photos I saw suggested that just letting the roots get longer and longer can look really quite cool after six or eight months, at which stage the roots are a fashion statement, not a lack of pride in one’s appearance. (I see a lot of this in the Silver Sisters’ group and in some cases it does look really fantastic). But getting to that stage seemed just too challenging, plus I figured I would need to cut out all the black, dyed (and damaged due to stripping) hair at some stage.

So, on February 3^rd 2016, I got it cut short at the sides and the back, with a floppy fringe.

Heading away on a girls’ weekend to Dublin the next day, I was loving my new look. The fringe hid the roots on the crown of my head (having no parting was great) and only a little grey was visible curling over my ears. When I went for the next cut, I insisted the hairdresser cut it in such a way that the grey was still hidden. The result was that it was completely shapeless. I, of course, unfairly blamed the hairdresser, and in a fit of pique, sought someone else to sort me out. As it was a Monday, I ended up walking into the only hairdresser in town open on a Monday, and she put the shape back into my hair.

Sadly, that meant short back and sides – and the sides were white – and I mean white! It was not a good look, so into the chemist I went in search of something to spray onto the white and hide it.

I used this successfully (or so I thought) for a few days before my husband pointed out that the colour was not the same as the rest of my hair, the spray made it hard and sticky and could be seen. Why didn’t I just leave it as it was?

So I did. Effectively, I went cold turkey. It was a tough few months – though I fully appreciate nothing compared to living through illness, war, famine etc. But tough in terms of how I looked and in terms of my self-confidence. I went along to the ‘open on Monday’ hairdresser for a trim every time I felt it had grown a little, and kept myself positive by taking pictures after each cut to show how far I had come. By May, all the black had been cut out.

But it was not particularly easy. I was still working, attending meetings with some fairly important people, who must have looked at me and felt sorry for me, or mentally criticised me for failing to keep up an appearance – they didn’t say anything, and perhaps I was just being paranoid. But I did look a bit odd.

There were family events, not least my Dad’s surprise 80^th birthday party in mid March, attended by family and friends we hadn’t seen in many years. A nice frock helped with the self-confidence just a little, but it was just a case of chin up and bear it. And it certainly was a conversation starter!

By mid-March, with regular trims by my understanding hairdresser, I was loving my short hair, and enjoying the style rather than focusing entirely on the colour. And as the white / grey came through more and more, I could see, and was even being told, what a fantastic colour it was. The journey was coming to an end, and I was excited to see the result.

Finally, on May 5^th 2016, the day before another girls’ weekend away, the coloured hair was gone. I had a very neat, cropped cut. There was a surprising amount of black still in it, particularly at the back, which gave it a bluish hint which I really liked.

I was finally free and it felt great!

Never before, nor since, have I taken so many selfies in the space of just a few months!

I kept it short for the best part of a year, before my desire for long hair returned. With hindsight, I should perhaps have kept it pixie short, because when it got a bit longer and the curl started to force its way through, it lost something of its edge. And growing it from short to long, as everyone who had ever had to go through the growing stage will testify, has it challenges too, whatever colour your hair.

At least it wasn’t costing me time and money in regular touch-ups!

There are people who questioned whether one should have long, grey hair. I actually loved it. But as I update this blog in mid March 2021, I have a new style – a silver bob. The length and weight of my hair eventually drove me mad – I spent more time than I would like with it in a pony tail, which sometimes gave me headaches. That said, the bob is now much longer than when it was first cut last September, and I am thinking I will let it grow long again – either that or go back to the pixie – hmmm!

Do I have regrets about going grey at 51? For the most part no. Occasionally, when I am sitting around in my sweatpants (I work a lot from home so these are not only worn during lockdown), no make-up and my least supportive underwear, with the hair dragged back from my face, I think that maybe the hair has aged me.

And there are occasions when people see only the white hair, not the person wearing it, and that can be difficult. When my hair was short, I got into a taxi in Portugal with my sister and my dad. The driver asked my sister if we were her parents – Dad is 29 years older than me! I could only hope that the driver had glimpsed two white heads and hadn’t looked at our faces.

Once, in church, when all the kids were at the front for the children’s talk, the substitute minister asked my daughter who she was with. She indicated me sitting at the back. ‘Oh, your granny,’ he commented loudly.  Cue burning embarrassment…

A more recent experience, which had me literally rushing to the supermarket to buy something that would totally cover my grey until hairdressers reopened after lockdown, still crushes my confidence. I was in a small shop with my husband when the woman shopkeeper, probably in her early 40s, asked him if I was his mother. He is exactly a week younger than me!

Thanks to the support of the Silver Sisters Facebook group (more than 600 comments on my first post relating to this, mostly all shouting ‘don’t colour your hair!’) I decided not to dye, though I am still considering a new style – roll on the end of lockdown!

But these incidents are few – mostly my hair draws very positive comments. Before I had longer, silver locks, I was never stopped in the street or supermarket and complimented by complete strangers. These days I am (occasionally!)

So for the most part I am very happy with my hair. It can be dressed up and down, the condition is great, the curl has returned, it contrasts well with a tan, I am not putting chemicals on my head every few weeks, I am saving time and money, and I am me.

This is that hair I was given and I feel very blessed. (For further update, please scroll to bottom of page).

The blonde / orange days (seriously!!!)

Different shapes of grey. The last picture was taken on September 10th 2020 – trying to look sultry after going for the new bob look.

Update November 28th 2021.

I can’t believe I am putting myself through this again! After all the angst of growing in the gray, and all the positivity I felt about my hair over the years, I let the thoughtless comments of others, probably uttered without any real malice, get to me, and after much deliberation I went back to colouring my hair in June 2021. I should have taken the time to read my own blog first!

It did not take long to regret it. It is easy to forget what makes us take a decision to do something in the first place. I was happy to take the hit of the cost both in time and money of going to the hairdresser once every three weeks to get my roots done. I had forgotten that after just a few days the silver would be showing on my scalp, and I would spend the next few weeks spraying the white with useful, but horrible, root concealer. I would be lacquering it flat so it couldn’t pop up of its own accord, and heaven help me if it was windy! A hairdresser commented that with grey hair, however young you might look face on, from the back you could be 18 or 80. That’s true, but if when viewed from behind, you have a big white gap showing in clearly dyed black hair, a person is unlikely to think you are 18 or even 38! That fountain of eternal youth is evasive, whatever you put on your hair!

The first picture above is the day I had it first coloured. I think I look quite good in this photo, but there is a filter on it, and the colour isn’t quite true and – as you will see from the photo taken just three weeks later (colouring delayed due to a bout of Covid-19), it faded quickly and the grey temples wasted no time in reasserting themselves. The last picture – very flattering I know! – was taken around seven weeks after my last colour.

As I write, I have 10 days to tolerate this horrible brown hair with its glowing roots and sticky spray, before a hairdresser will attack it with scissors, hopefully to reveal my natural white at the (short) back and sides. She will strip the colour (I swore I would never do this again, but the hair is short and any frazzled hair will soon be cut off – needs must). She will add a grey colour to the striped hair that hopefully blends with my own colour and I hope I will be a silver sister again. I will be back….

December 8th 2021: So I am not sure this is quite what I was expecting when I took my black hair with its white lining (eight weeks growth of silver roots) to the hairdresser in a bid to make my transition back to grey easier this time round. I had thought she would cut the sides and back, then brush a little bleach onto the remaining black ends, colour them something close to my own silver, and hey presto – done! Alas, apparently that would have been patchy – and so my entire scalp was saturated in peroxide (not pleasant) and I ended up pure white with yellow ends on top (horrific!). Then the ‘ash grey’ toner was added and the end result – I have purple hair!!! It’s not so bad really, a fun colour for Christmas, and I am assured it will fade and my new growth will blend in nicely. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, I will endeavour to enjoy my ‘fun’ purple hair, starting with matching it with a purple hoodie! Watch this space…

January 27th 2020: The fun purple hair did not last long. By Christmas Day it had faded to a pale yellowish pink (beige actually, and I hate beige!) And it was still so, so short. So I bought a silver toner in Tesco, convinced this would remove the beige and turn me silver. Aargh – it turned me purple again, so I immediately shampooed it furiously before drying. It stayed purple for a week or two, then was beige again. Figuring purple is better than beige, I used the same toner, without shampooing out at the end and blimey – it did stick for longer, particularly on my own white roots. But the beige won the day, the style had disappeared, and seven weeks after the initial cut and ‘bleach out’ (technical term I guess), I returned to the hairdresser in the hope of a better style and the removal of offending beige hair – without addition of bleach or toners. But I didn’t want to go quite so short because ultimately I want my silver curls back again. So we went for a short back and sides and a thinning out of the beige on top. The end result isn’t too bad, depending on the light. Pictures below, from left, show Christmas beige; back to purple with silver toner and yesterday, after the chop. Nearly there…!

May 2020 (below) and there is still a bit of beige in the ends at the top, but I can live with that. So now the question is – do I stick with short or go back to growing it?

March 2023: So here we are (picture below right), finally getting a bit of length and the curl is coming back in. It seems to be taking forever to grow, not helped by my inability to decide what style I am aiming for. But getting there, slowly…

August 2023: My goodness, I have finally found a product that actually works when it comes to removing the brassy yellow caused by sun, heat, and who knows what else! So the purple shampoo is reasonably effective – three weeks in Spain and my hair wasn’t too yellow, though as usual there was purple build up on the roots and the ends were definitely somewhat yellow – but I did keep my hair covered when in the sun and the yellow wasn’t horrendous.

Then – when I travelled light to join my daughter in a very sunny Crete and didn’t bring my purple shampoo – the ends of my hair turned bright yellow despite covering my head every time I was in the sun! It was so bad that five days into the trip, and two days before coming home, I thought I might have to get all the yellow cut out. But I visited a huge beauty shop (like a Savers in the UK) and found a range of pruple products. For Euro 2.99 I picked up a Kallos Silver Reflex hair mask and it was incredible. After a normal shampoo and towel dry, I just applied it to the yellow strands, left it 5 minutes and the result was amazing! So when I got home, I ordered a one litre tub of the stuff from Amazon. Hope you agree that my hair is definitely nice and silver in the pic below. Love it and would highly recommend!