Going Grey After The Pandemic

The pandemic has given me time to truly see myself - without makeup, artificial hair color, or pretense. It has inspired me to embrace my natural grey hair in the winter and play with herbal dyes in the summer. Wearing my hair short allows for an easy grow out of natural plant dyes and frequent changing up of my hair style.

I believe that a great haircut will always out-perform artificial hair color when it comes to style. To me grey hair is just as beautiful as any other color of hair when it is sculpted into a beautiful style that embraces it’s texture and enhances facial features and bone structure. Salt and pepper hair gives natural dimension to hair, making it appear fuller, while patchy grey and white streaks may provide areas of intrigue and versatility in a hairstyle, in very similar ways to artificial highlights. Shorter hair styles show off natural color variations in greying hair. People who embrace their natural hair color with a shorter hair styles enjoy a lower maintenance lifestyle while looking more put together on a regular basis.

When you decide to embrace your grey hair, you may be surprised to discover that it works better with your skin tone than artificial color. Transitioning to your natural color can be a bit scary at first, but I am her to accompany you on the journey, and promise to help you feel beautiful all along the way. Remember your hair doesn’t define you, it is only the frame that surrounds your beautiful face. While your hair may change over time, it’s important to remember that your haircut can either enhance or distract from your natural beauty, it doesn’t define it.

Grey hair often grows in with a slightly different texture than pigmented hair. The change of texture may be a result of shrinkage, loss of elasticity, and dryness that may benefit from treatments, different styling products or a new hair style. Please ask me about ways to support your changing hair texture and what products are best for your specific hair type during your next appointment, or visit my affiliate partners to learn more about healthy and organic products that I have personally researched and tested.

How To Cover Gray and Eliminate brassy hair

Most hair is prone to becoming “brassy” or orange/copper when artificial hair colors fade. This is because all oxidative dyes (both permanent, and demi-permanent colors alike) remove or “lift out” some of the natural pigments from the cortex of the hair in the process of depositing artificial color there. This is especially problematic for folks who are trying to blend or cover grey hair to match a natural color.

The root cause of excessive warmth in artificially dyed hair comes from the hair’s underlying pigment or undertone (see illustration). All permanent and demi-permanent hair coloring products on the market that combine an artificial dye with a developer (hydrogen preoxide) utilize a chemical reaction to drive small color molecules under the cuticle of the hair and deep into the cortex (center shaft) of the hair where the dyes swell and “stick” during the “processing” time. The faster the coloring process, the more unstable the dye color results and the more likely the color will change and fade over time. During the oxidative dying process, natural melanin pigments are removed from the hair and replaced with artificial pigments. This increases the hair’s porosity and makes the hair prone to color fading over time - revealing the hair’s warm or “brassy” undertone. The darker the hair the more orange/red the undertone. Fine hair is especially prone to becoming brassy after artificial hair coloring.

For folks who experience a lot of undesirable warmth or “brassiness” from artificial color (but don’t have a lot of white/grey hair), I recommend trying my Artisanal Herbal Hair Color: a natural plant dye that preserves all the natural pigments in your hair, effectively blends grey hair with natural hair colors, strengthens and seals the hair’s cuticle, and preserves the hair’s natural dimension, color variation and reflection. I have created a bespoke range of non-oxidative, herbal hair colors that are designed to stain and seal the cuticle of the hair, providing natural color protection and a permanent color change to silver and white hair.

Herbal hair color is the ultimate way to take care of hair naturally, using the healing and protective properties of nature. The more often it is applied, the healthier the hair becomes. It doesn’t go “brassy” and provides optimum grey blending and conditioning benefits to hair.