Greying is a natural part of the ageing process. Research shows that up to 23% of people have 50% grey hair at the age of 50 [1]. If you’re looking to embrace this change sooner rather than later, transitioning to grey hair with highlights is a great option. Because while it can be liberating to show off your natural silver strands, it can also be difficult to do suddenly.
Highlights and lowlights can not only help blend your grey strands easily and seamlessly but also provide depth and dimension. This way, you can retain a youthful, modern look and minimise awkwardness during this transition phase.
Read on to discover how to get a smooth transition to grey hair with highlights. Insights include:
Highlights are an excellent choice for seamlessly transitioning your hair to grey because they can help blend your emerging silver tones with your existing hair colour. They can also help emphasise the shades you like best and give you better control over the proportion of visible greying. Finally, skilled use of highlights and lowlights can add a vibrant contrast to your hair.
See how to go grey gracefully with these tips for applying highlights.
It can be tempting to save money on transitioning to grey by box dyeing your hair or adding DIY highlights. But if you’re not a professional hairdresser, this could be a risky move.
Instead, we recommend going to a hair stylist for the most natural-looking transition. They can help you find the best colour match, apply a subtle shade that blends well with your existing hair, and give you top haircare tips for looking after your highlights and/or lowlights.
To seamlessly blend in your greying hair, you will need hues that are 2-3 shades lighter than your current colour but, at the same time, close to your natural hue. This helps the highlights blend with your various coloured strands.
If you have lighter hair, you may want to consider autumn tones, such as caramel, copper shimmer, honey or light ash blonde. If your hair is light blonde, you can even go for sandy or pearl highlights, which will mix well with grey.
If you have dark hair, highlights may be a little tricky, as the contrast can be too jarring. If you are a medium brunette, some golden, chocolate or light auburn highlights may blend nicely with your colour. But if you are a dark brunette, using lowlights to achieve a daring salt-and-pepper look may serve you better.
While highlights are lighter than your base colour, lowlights are just the opposite: 2-3 shades darker. When trying to blend grey strands, combining these techniques can give your look depth, texture and complexity.
If your hair is a darker shade, you can strike a beautiful, uniform salt-and-pepper look by using highlights on the darker areas and lowlights to blend the lighter tone with your natural colour.
Whether you opt for highlights, lowlights or both, a toner helps you find the perfect shade. Toner counteracts any unwanted brassy, gold or orange tones.
And you don’t need to worry about hair shedding, as it’s a hair loss myth that toner damages your hair. As long as you’re not using it excessively and following your stylist’s instructions, it should be safe for your hair health.
If you have a darker hair shade, heavy highlights can look unnatural and create too much contrast. That is when you should consider getting babylights. This technique involves creating thin, subtle, lighter-coloured strands which give you a sun-kissed appearance. They are much more airy than regular highlights, and if you don’t have a large amount of grey hair, they can help it blend in better.
Using babylights to frame your face can also give your hair an overall lighter appearance. Opting for a balayage can also yield good results, producing fine, discreet highlights.
If you have light or pale blond hair, the Herringbone highlight technique can work for you. It involves applying a lighter (e.g. ash or platinum) colour in a diagonal, overlapping pattern. This seamlessly blends in your greying strands with the highlights and creates depth and dimension.
While brunettes and redheads can also enjoy this technique, if left to a seasoned professional, it works significantly better for blondes, as the colour contrast is naturally lower.
The first thing you need to do when you’ve decided to transition to grey hair is to stop dying your roots as they grow in. But even with creative use of highlights, this can lead to a visible colour difference between the dyed length of hair and its roots.
When this happens, your stylist can use a shade in between your natural and dyed hair and apply it to soften the transition line, camouflaging hue differences. They will add this colour close to your roots, then use their fingers to smudge the colour, blending it with the existing dye.
Cutting your hair shorter while transitioning can help reduce the time it takes to go full grey. You can keep trimming the ends as your hair grows until full colour replacement is achieved. This helps reduce the contrast between your previously dyed hair and your natural, greying colour and allows you to try new hairstyles, such as pixie cuts or layered bobs.
While long hairstyles can age you (especially when wearing a midline parting), shorter ones can be fresher and more fun. Here are some great short hairstyles for women that you can choose from.
Blue and purple shampoos are used to counter unsightly hair discolourations. Purple shampoo works best on grey or blonde hair to remove the yellowing, while the blue formula helps remove the brass from darker hair shades.
Many hairstylists use these shampoos to prepare the hair before toning, but you can also use them at home between appointments, as needed.
The most important thing you can do while transitioning to grey hair with highlights is to keep your hair healthy and well cared for. Hair dye can cause hair loss and damage strands, giving you dry, brittle hair. Even semi-permanent dye can be damaging. So, after getting highlights, keep your hair well-moisturised and protected from the sun to avoid breakage. Avoiding heat styling can also help, as fixing heat-damaged hair can be difficult.
Moreover, as your hair greys progressively, it will likely become coarser, more rigid and more difficult to style. However, using essential oils for hair growth can nourish it, keep it soft and shiny and even help treat certain types of alopecia.
Your hair colour is determined by a substance called melanin which is produced by melanocyte cells found in the hair bulb [2]. Melanocytes deplete with age, meaning less melanin is secreted with each hair growth cycle and, leaving more of your hair under-pigmented.
Since not all of your hair loses the same amount of melanin at the same time, some strands will be lighter while others will be darker, giving it a salt-and-pepper look.
Natural ageing is the main cause of hair greying, as most people start going grey in their 30s or 40s [3][1]. However, in some cases, this process can happen much sooner, in early adulthood or even adolescence. There are several reasons why you may be greying despite a young age:
Lighter hair shades — such as blond, caramel, or auburn —are normally easier to transition to grey, as the contrast is not as pronounced as darker hues. However, you can also get an elegant salt-and-pepper look with black or deep brunette hair, with creative use of highlights and lowlights.
The fastest way to make this transition is to cut your hair as short as possible. This is a quick and easy way to remove the previous hair dye and allow your hair to regrow in its natural colour.
However, if you are looking for an instant solution and don’t want to give up your longer locks, you can always dye your hair grey or silver and allow it to mix with your naturally grey strands as the roots begin to grow. Your hairstylist can help you blend shade differences to make this transition smoother. Bear in mind this will probably include bleach, which is very drying and not usually recommended if your hair is damaged.
While grey hair is a sign of maturity, transitioning to grey hair won’t necessarily age you overnight. Grey or silver hair is a popular modern look among younger women. In addition, your look depends on various factors, such as your hairstyle, facial features, sense of style, and your overall vibe.
Like balding, it’s more socially acceptable for men to go grey than for women. So men are more likely to embrace their greys without the need to transition (although in recent years more hair dyes have been marketed to men). But many women find it empowering to accept their greys, finding new ways to retain their youthful vigour.
There are several things you can do to maintain your youthful appearance after transitioning to grey hair:
The only valid answer to this question is whenever you feel fully comfortable doing so. While different stylists make recommendations based on your proportion of grey hair, embracing your silver strands can happen as early or as late as you like. Some women never colour their hair and wear their greys proudly, while others enjoy vibrant hair colours well into their senior years.
For those with shoulder-length hair, it usually takes around one to two years to fully transition to grey hair. But the amount of time it takes depends on your genes, lifestyle, expectations, and previous hair styling choices. It can take shorter hairs significantly less time to make this transition, which is why you may want to get a haircut if you’d like to see results sooner.
Greying in itself should not make your hair fall out more or make it thinner. In fact, the opposite is true: research shows that white or grey strands have a significantly higher growth rate, thickness and shaft length than pigmented hair [1].
However, hair greying and thinning are often produced by the same factor: ageing. As you advance in age, you become more predisposed to conditions that cause hair loss, such as male -pattern baldness or female -pattern baldness. In fact, 85% of men and 50% of women experience hair loss by the age of 50 [8][9]. Moreover, hormonal changes due to menopause can also cause hair loss.
While there are proven ways to hide and regrow thinning hair, the best thing you can do is to book a consultation with a trichologist for the first signs of hair thinning and balding.
They will examine you and perform specific diagnostic trichology tests (such as a hair pull test or blood tests for hair loss) to determine why your hair may be falling out so they can recommend the right treatment. This may include medication, such as Minoxidil, or therapies, such as PRP hair treatments.
If your hair loss is advanced and you are a suitable candidate, you can even get a hair transplant. The advantage of hair restoration surgery is that it takes a few hours to get and a lifetime to enjoy, as hair transplants are permanent. If this procedure is something you may be interested in, check out our before and after hair transplant gallery to see our results.
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