That's it, I'm done with dye!

[BackToTheOIdHouse]

I've been dyeing my hair since I was 15 (I'm now 47). It's been every colour under the sun but dark brown for the last 20 years. It changed from 'dyeing for fun' to 'dyeing as a chore to cover greys' about 16 years ago.

In the last five years or so I've had to dye fortnightly to cover up the roots, and after about four or five days the silver starts poking through so for most of that time I have to use root powders/sprays which are messy and come off on everything. My hair takes about three washes to lose that slippery, dirty feeling after I've dyed it so it never, ever feels clean. It also has an orangey tint which is worse in the summer, and the ends are also always strawlike even though I have regular trims. My calendar is marked with the days I need to dye to make sure my hair is as root-free as possible for whatever occasion (for example, I'd have to dye it on 19 Dec to strike the balance between not feeling slippery/gross and roots showing for Christmas). And it's snapping like nobody's business - the ends are straggly and thin.

Well, I was due to dye it two weeks ago but thought, sod it. I've been building up to this for ages but put it off time and time again for all sorts of reasons - I'll look older (people often think I'm ten years younger than I am, did I want to throw that away?), the transition being too awful, DH being a decade younger than me and how would he feel (unsure when I told him my plan, but after a bit of thought said he quite likes the idea as it turns out). But suddenly something clicked and I thought no excuse is good enough.

So here I am, five weeks of regrowth and nervous about how the next few months are going to pan out! My plan is to use the powders etc for a few months until it's passed the 'she's forgotten to do her roots' stage and looks deliberate. Though my hair is so dark the demarcation line will be brutal!

Anyone else done this, or is doing it? Any words of advice, experience or encouragement gladly accepted. Grombre on Instagram is fab, are there any other accounts/sites etc to inspire me?

Sorry for the long post!

I plan to do this in January.
My plan ( although not sure it will work)
Is to literally just dye my parting and nothing else.
Let the rest of it just grow out and have regular trims.
When it's at the stage we're it looks dipped dye or I'm use to it then I will just change how I part my hair.

I grew mine out 4 years ago.. had a wobble on here a week or so ago, when I contemplated dying it again and my adult DD2 told me not to be so bloody daft I've now got over the urge again...she's right!
Mines white at the parting and scattered grey going to dark brown at the back.

I just grew mine. Months 3-6 were the worst when it looked like 'she needs her roots doing' after that it was obviously deliberate. My hair is so much healthier now, and while I may sometimes pine for my brown hair I know the root upkeep would annoy me very quickly.

I cut mine to a bob at about 7 months, currently shoulder length. Once you are past the worst bit it gets much easier :)

And yes the Going Gorgeously Gray fb group is great for keeping up morale!

i bleached mine platinum and toned to silver to grow my brown dye out. It grew out really well (short hair though)

another one growing out the dye..... haven't had my hair coloured since March

this me just after I had it cut in August, and had a toner put on at the hairdressers to try to blend it a bit

ClosedAura, that looks like it blends really well.
Fatulous, I think your parting plan will work, I often think as I dry my hair how radically different my grey/lack of grey looks depending on my parting. You will have two different looks, as long as you can wear different partings easily. Mine bothers me if a single hair is on the "wrong" side.

I grew my dye out years ago, but I just bit the bullet and lived with two toned hair until I could have it chopped off into a short bob, if you don't think you can live with the tide mark maybe bite the bullet and pay for a professional colour to get as close to your roots as possible.

I let mine go grey about 3 years ago. I've got wide streaks of silver-white and less wide streaks of the original brown. I like it. I get random compliments from strangers. Also I think this Halloween I can do a natural bride of Frankenstein updo!

I'm one year in, one year to go. Root spray got me through most of my transition so far. I'm now using Overtone which is genuinely wash-out and magically good at killing the blorange hue and generally toning. It is available only in the US so it is expensive to ship - I'm hoping Joico Colour Butter in Titanium is a good altetnative, I've just ordered some.
Stick with it.
I'm not as evangelical as some. I will openly admit I would probably prefer to be a brunette but only if I could be a natural brunette. I don't think I could ever go back to dye now. For me I was having to dye every three weeks and I look back at photos now and think I was fooling nobody.
It itched and burned and was expensive to do right.
Plus, the double standards with men and women over this has started to bother me no end.

@sheshootssheimplores

Your hair looks great and good to see how it works on curly hair.

What’s your natural colour and what exactly do you ask for at the hairdresser?

I get three different colours put through my hair every three months. One platinum blonde, one caramel, and one dark brown (that’s my natural colour). For some reason this just works! It looks natural, I don’t get noticeable regrowth and it’s low maintenance.

Oh I was a bleach blonde for years, I got utterly fed up with the time and money it took.
Bit the bullet about 4 years ago now. Gone short too. I miss being blonde but not enough to carry on spending 4 hours and a hundred quid every month.
Mines more grey than brown now and I just wish it was all grey rather than this salt and pepper look. In fact if I had all grey I would grow it out.
Got some lovely boots with that hundred I saved each month.

I've had my hair coloured to match my roots today. First pic is my roots prior to having colour done, I had about three inches of roots and the rest was dark brown box dye. Second pic is the all over colour now and I will be using Bleach London Smoky Shampoo and Conditioner to tone it.

That's lovely, Happy.

I was in your position nine months ago OP and just went for it. The growth is at about the top of my ears now and look meant. At the inbetweeny stage I got a bottle of Organic Colour Systems in pink and used it. The bottle did 4 times.

It dyed the whites a rosy pink and blended in the slight difference between the natural brown and dyed brown nicely. I really liked it and it got me through a couple of months that would have been tricky otherwise.

I have found root sprays completely ineffective. Can anyone mention a brand? I am going to go for it after a holiday and grow it out over the winter.

I was using a semi-permanent Nice & Easy but have decided just to go to the Nice and Easy root touch up kits instead. Colour had built up on my lengths and they were like tangled straw - I used the MN haircut to hack off a couple of inches on Sunday and it feels a bit better.

My longer term plan is to let the colour fade out, strip it back as far as possible with the Vitamin C method, see what I am left with and then go to the hairdresser for highlights/lowlights. I have a few other stresses going on at the moment, so don't feel quite ready, but that's the plan!

3 years ago a young hairdresser told me that whatever I was doing with my hair really wasn’t working anymore. I was 90% grey on front and 80% at back and doing home dye jobs every 3 weeks with roots constantly sprayed. No way I could afford professional coverage so even went over 12 months for haircut.

So I took the plunge and the expense and did two bleaching stints at hairdresser. Was really expensive but so worth it. I started in January and wore a beanie a lot that winter. I did the second two months later. It worked a charm. My long hair was close to platinum blonde.

Now I get half head of highlights 2-3 times a year and will do this for just a few more years til the rest is greyer. Very happy with this even though the back is now a very salty mousy colour with platinum tips that look ‘dipped’ on account I was a natural dark brown and only get a half head of highlights.

Here’s the thing though. The top of my head is pure white not grey and white hair is thinner so it looks like I have a noticeable bald spot when dyed dark brown. No powder or spray product really covered these properly between dye jobs. So I did have to make a drastic change.

Second. It is was constant build up of dye that meant it took two bleaches to lift the Colour. And now purple l’oreal Saloon purple shampoo is my friend.

@MaybeDoctor

I used Vit C to strip my hair. Was partly successful. Very rough on my hair and only took a layer or two of dye out so it just meant I had wider roots and they were orange on account of using chocolate brown permanent dye every 3 weeks.

Still it made took the first bleach job lighter than the hairdresser thought it would.

I have short hair and lots of it. Went lighter with the base colour and had two different colours of highlights to blend with the grey. My hairdresser used high lift rather than bleach as it meant I didn't then need toner on it. It took a while, but now it's completely my natural colour and kind of steely grey overall. It's not as light as I had thought it was looking at the root growth against dye.

I get lots of compliments. I don't think grey hair is ageing - it's the face that shows that more and obviously dyed hair can be pretty ageing in itself.

We are lucky that we live in a time when grey hair is in fashion and if we go too far on the purple toners it looks ‘up to the minute’. And baylage/dipped and dark roots are all ok.

This is a good time to transition to grey!

I use semi permanent dye rather than permanent and then the regrowth isn't so bad. Maybe go lighter?

Or lowlights