Hair turning snow white at 26!! Help!

[KizzyKat91]

Over the past few weeks I suddenly seem to have gained a load of new white hairs! I found my first few at the age of 15 (!!) and have been steadily gaining a few more each year, but they were easily hidden and ignored.

But I suddenly seem to have sprouted loads and they're really obvious - they stick up around my hairline and make me look a bit of a mess

How do I go about hiding them? My hair is naturally a very dark brown but I've been having dark blonde/light brown highlights for years. But I don't feel adding more blonde is a solution as the white hairs are really stark white and won't blend in with the blonde?

Don't particularly want to dye my hair back to its original dark brown (almost black) either, as I'm very pale and used to get a lot of comments about how pale I was, questions whether I was sick, going for the gothic look etc. The highlights seemed to prevent this!

I'm really not a high maintenance person and just can't see myself faffing about with home hair dye every few weeks. (Would have to buy a few packs as have v. Long hair) However, I also can't afford to be getting professional highlights every month. I only get them 3 times a year at the minute and until recently they looked really natural and grew out well, but the white hairs have scuppered this!

I'm looking forward to having beautiful long snowy white straight hair when I'm older, but I'm not quite ready for it yet

Any advice would be appreciated!

Oh and before anyone asks, going grey early is normal in my mothers side of the family. Grandmother and great aunt were fully snowy white by the time they were mid 20s and aunt has been dying her hair jet black since her teens.
Also, I've been to the doctors and there are no health issues behind it - it's just an unfortunate genetic quirk!

As you are so young, can you use these trendy pastels/grey dyes? We have a similar genetic quirk in our family.

Watching with interest im about 80% grey at 33. I havent worked out what to do apart from continuously home dye which costs a fortune and has ruined my hair!

I think adding more blonde highlights round your face is the only way tbh. If the most intense part is your hairline, you can probably do them yourself quite easily.

I had to start using permanent dye on my hair at 28 as semis no longer blended them in - like you, its a genetic quirk of my mums family so all pictures going back 4 generations have a mallen streak for younger women - and was dyeing every 2 weeks in the end to try and hide it. I eventually gave up at 38 to have white and grey hair

I'd discuss the best route forward with your hair stylist. If s/he is any good the knowledge they have about hair is pretty extensive and if s/he knows your hair then they would be best placed to give you advice. Be up front about the amount of money you can spend on it and how much faff you're prepared to put up with and see what they say.

Embrace it

I started going grey at around 14 / 15 too and I dyed my hair for two decades. Then I thought - fuck this shit.

I was in the hairdressers for two hours every four weeks. The cost and the boredom was unbearable. Now my hair takes 15 mins to cut every two months and my hairdresser never tires of telling me how much money people are paying trying to dye their hair grey (it's a thing with the young ones - who knew?).

Now at age 37, I am totally grey and I absolutely love it. I wish I'd just left it well alone as it started going grey in the first place and never gone near hair dye.

Well it's comforting to know that others are in the same boat

My friends all think it's really bizarre and insist it must be reversible

Part of the problem is that my trusted long term hairdresser has moved and I haven't managed to find another decent colourist! My last lot of highlights were far too orangey so I'm still searching...but beginning to think having highlights more often is the way to go.

I would love to go for the pastel hair trend or dye my hair grey all over, but again, it would be too high maintenance due to the amount of very dark brown hair I still have. Plus I work in quite a conservative/professional environment and I don't think it would go down well!