Many women choose to cover their grey hair with dye to maintain a youthful appearance. However, rocking grey or silver hair can be just as vibrant and youthful if you know a few essential tips. Glam Girl Gabi, a licensed hairstylist and beauty influencer with over 500,000 YouTube subscribers, shares her wisdom for embracing your natural greys.
In a video, Gabi emphasizes that transitioning away from artificial dyes isn’t as simple as just stopping. She advises: “The biggest piece of advice I have for you if you’re looking to transition out of coloring your hair is to start by ashing out your hair.”
Gabi highlights a common mistake, explaining: “Mistake number one is having a warm hair color contrasting with your grey hair.” Warm hues like chestnut browns and honey blondes clash with grey because they are opposite tones. L’Oreal Professionnel clarifies that ash hair colors, whether blonde or brunette, contain undertones of grey, green, blue, and violet. These cool tones lack red or orange shades, making them ideal for blending with grey.
Gabi emphasizes: “There are warm colors and there are cool colors, and grey is cool. So, if you put it beside something warm, it looks really bad.”
To avoid this contrast, salons offer various methods, including root smudging. A colourist can blend your natural grey roots with the rest of your hair for a gradual transition. Ash blonde and grey highlights are another option, blending blonde and grey highlights into blonde or brunette hair as it grays.
“When you first decide you’re nearly ready to go natural, a step in the right direction would be to start going lighter. That way, the roots grow in a little more gracefully,” says Kali Ferrara, a hairstylist and colourist at The Salon Project at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Color-matched lowlights can also soften the contrast; try mushroom brown, ashy lowlights to create a seamless blend. Hair experts advise against going darker than your natural color, which is what lowlights are usually used for. Instead, try to match your non-grey hair color.
Another quick way to transition to fully grey hair is to grow your roots as long as possible and then get a super-short haircut to remove the leftover color. A pixie cut can be chic and low-maintenance, but if you’ve never had short hair, it could be too drastic a change. A short bob is a safe bet, flattering most face shapes.
Any good stylist can help you determine the right length to complement your face shape. As a general rule, slimmer faces tend to look great with hair that hits just under the jawbone, while fuller faces may want to go slightly longer – perhaps a few inches below the jaw.
