Grey hair really getting me down

[Whowahway123]

ok, I know it’s pure vanity and grand scheme of things 1st world problem but I cannot explain how much having my hair like makes me feel so embarrassed.

im turning 40 in a couple of weeks and recently had a few major life changes so everything feels very ‘a lot’ at the minute.

This picture shows 6weeks hair growth. Usual appointment costs £90 without cutting just to blend roots & a few highlights. I cannot afford this due to COL and I have an inkling my hairdresser is going to put her rates up, which I totally understand.

how can I mentally let go of worrying about having grey hair? How can I embrace it?
I’ve looked online and seen some really funky grey styles, but I’m definitely not ‘funky’ enough to carry them off.

Aibu for being so vain it actually has made me cancel plans for this weekend because of it?

I know I am, but please tell me some positive grey hair late 30s / early 40s stories. Thanks

Don't box dye it! Your hair looks well maintained. I think that all over/one-colour thing is more ageing than roots.

I know that fear of "omg, roots" and the count down to the next appt. I started to resent the process as much as the greys. I'm 48 and have about the same amount of greys as you. Three months ago I just thought f* it, I am sick of this. I let it grow and I'm three months in. I TOTALLY get that feeling of not wanting to be seen and nervous of meetings where it'll be very apparent to people (so I think). I got a fringe cut in and because it bounces a bit my hair is sitting differently around my face, it's hiding the roots (which are nowhere NEAR as bad as that initial stripline looks!)

I'm also booked in for low lights to go for a softer blend and less frequent visits - if I could click my fingers I'd have my natural brown with the greys and then I'd figure it out. Instead it's dealing with growing out a colour and tide line.

So after all that I've no real solution 😂 but my head shifted and I was literally you four months ago. I'm sick of all this "hiding" but I am eight years older than you and I'm OK with it. Good luck!!!

I think your hair looks OK by the way!

I dye mine at home and use root touch up but I also got a wig off Amazon and it’s brilliant! Definitely recommend it.

I'm.mid 30s and have been greying since my teens. Have always box dyed it. Now it's every 2/3 weeks and I just can't keep doing it. I'm going to brave it and grow it out. I've decided if I've got a fancy function il use a wash in wash out, but other than that it's being left.

I'm early 40s and stopped dying my hair about 4 or 5 years ago. I have my moments of thinking I'm looking old and haggard and wondering whether I'd look younger if I dyed it again, but we all have our bad days and the fact is I am older and do look older, and would do no matter what colour my hair was!

Mostly I really like my grey hair. I've a bit of a white streak at the front and a mix of silver and dark through the rest.

I always due my own hair with Nice and Easy. It really is very easy.

I grew mine out during COVID so the grey is now about six inches. The contrST AGAINST MY blonde natural hair looks great but at the minute I have semi permanent honey blonde on as I had a job interview. 20 washes. I would bin the hairdresser and if you aren't ready to do grey dye at home.

If you're on insta there is a huge grey hair community of 'silver sisters'. I started following a lot of them before I took the plunge and grew my grey out. I was totally fed up of scheduling my life around how dyed my hair was, and reached the point of doing it every 3 weeks myselfas it got too expensive in a salon.
'Grombre' is a account to follow as it picks the best of the pics too.

Growing my hair out was the best thing.

I think just DIY. I’m a greying redhead and reds fade so quickly that I cannot justify salon cost. So I just box dye. I just re-dye it all every few weeks so overtime it’s just become a mix of tones anyway.

I hate my grey hair. Got quite alot of it now through my dark brown hair. I put a semi permanent through it or use a gloss colour conditioner every so often to blend the greys a bit and add a warmer colour to my hair. But I don't cover my greys completely. I hate having grey only at the roots I think that looks worse on me.

Same as others have said, you either need to change your hairdresser or get your current one to accept box dye in between.
I do my own roots dark blonde every 4 weeks, then my hairdresser does blonde highlights every 8-10 weeks. She isn't bothered that o do the roots in between. My hair is naturally medium brown and I am going significantly grey, age 42

Do you think most men worry about this sort of thing ?
No
Embrace the grey & the freedom !

You could find a new hairdresser who’ll do a root touch up for about £50.

I’ve been going grey since my late teens so I’ve always dyed it. For years I went to a salon, spending a fortune, then my usual stylist became a bit of a pain in the arse (I think the salon changed hands so they were under pressure to “upsell”) so I tried a box dye close to my natural colour. I liked it, so I’ve played around over the years with different colours - reds, purples - and now I have a colour I love.

I dare say as I get older - I’m mid 40s now - that I might have something done professionally again but right now I like the vibrant colour (which I fully accept probably won’t suit me as I age!) plus I have long hair which would take an age to grow out. I don’t want it cut short so I’ll probably look at some sort of fade when I want to embrace grey. But right now I’m perfectly happy with my home dye!

I have hair down to my bum and when I started noticing greys I started having half head of foils with a grey toner every 3/4 months (then use the grey shampoo and conditioner) so my transition to grey was a gradual process as the build up of foils became more and more until it was a full head. Now I only go for a trim every 3 months but T section probably every 6 months just to blend the growth in a little until I won’t need to and in between my hair looks like stretched roots style, I don’t know how the stylist does it 😂

I don’t think it’s necessary to be particularly funky with grey hair, go for it, embrace it!

It's ok to be grey.

I wouldn't pay so much for highlights that stripy - looks very dated. I'd dye it myself or grow out the grey.

I second (or third or fourth) the grombre suggestion. I think it looks great. It’s still maintained, get the balayage part done and tone it regularly, but much less upkeep.

Semi permanent.. £10 or less when on offer. I doubt hairdresser will even notice. If she is pissy, there are plenty of others.

Stop and have a proper think about how you’ve been prepared to pay £90 for vanity.
Then get on with growing it out.

Regarding hair dye at home, the trick is not to do all of it, avoid the lighter strands around the face, because most people have lighter bits at the front of their face…. And don’t do it to the ends either also so hair ends are naturally lighter

maybe think about embracing the grey?

I’m in my 30s and mostly grey.

Check out a few pages on Facebook such as Going grey gracefully.

There’s a lot of beautiful women who look amazing once they stop dying their hair- the hardest part is growing it out but once it’s done most look younger than with dyed hair.

I box dyed for a while in my early 30's- the greys meant the result wasn't monochrome and it looked good- though you do need to be careful not to pick the more red-toned browns or the grey shows up as quite orange in the sun!! I just had cuts at the hairdresser.

I got fed up in my mid 30's and grew it out- had various layered/feathered cuts which really softened the stripe as it grew. I have had it long during covid but it does generally look much better when it's cut a bit more imaginatively rather than long and straight. I have gone through less "funky" and more "funky" and both have worked fine for me. I get soooooooo many complements on it- I've been really surprised by the reaction I got as I grew it out!

I understand, I don’t seem to have the same lovely grey colour my friends have. I have a dirty looking grey that just grows like thick wires. But I mainly suffer it around my face - I’m 45 - not much through the hair. It’s like a dirty grey halo around my face :(

I haven’t gone for a blonde highlighted look yet - sticking with my natural brown colour. At the moment I get a root rage inbetween a root colour every 3 months - it’s pushing it but it’s what I can afford. I did try the box dyes but I have very thick hair so two boxes later and I found it only lasted a couple of weeks - so after covid straight back to hairdressers.

It’s my only luxury and I I feel so much better getting it done - I spend £60 for the roots every three months and £20 for one root rage inbetween . My hairdresser also wouldn’t judge me if I’ve put a box colour on , but she would probably have to do another all over colour so it would be a little more expensive to correct it so it all matches.

I am early 40s with rapidly greying hair.

I got fed up with the expense and "chemicaliness" of colouring it every 4 weeks, so I grew it out to natural colour.

I felt very aged by the grey/blonde/brown mix of my natural hair, so I now use a colour-depositing shampoo to gently tone it blonder/browner. I use Plantur39 Brown and it makes my dark grey/brown hairs browner and my grey hairs blonde. Which looks a lot more natural than a block box colour because the lighter bits where the lightest grey is underneath show variation/highlights.

There's also a very small amount of grey left, so it looks a bit more natural; like you're not colouring your hair, just reducing the grey!

It washes out if you stop using the shampoo. I was worried it wouldn't, but when I stopped using it for two weeks I think it was all gone.

I have a lot of grey and have been trying to embrace it because I have a severe hair dye allergy. However, I saw a recommendation on here recently of a product called "Leganza" available on Amazon in a wide range of colours and thought I'd give it a go. It's a colouring conditioner. To my astonishment, it has covered all my grey and I had no allergy reaction at all. It's about £8. Definitely worth a try!