If you dye your greying hair

[riperhubarb]

Then what is your routine? I'm 40 and all
Of a sudden 4 weekly box dye isn't enough and doesn't last so I'm having to introduce root touch up at 2 weeks. Is this normal. How grey are you and what is your routine?

Highlights is the answer as the blonde helps with the grey regrowth.

I'm going white on one side of the face (aaarghh) & elsewhere. I have naturally dark blonde hair.

White frizzy hairs plus a youngish looking (I hope) face does not match.

So I have blonde highlights- I get a half head 6-7 weekly including some packets underneath because I have to tie my hair up for work. The white hairs blend in with the blonde highlights.

Btw a the white hairs at the side show after literally 2-3 weeks but they aren't too obvious to other people with the blonde.

My hair is like yours tierraJ, I love it! I'm grey mostly around my hairline and temples, my DH much prefers it when I'm blind and it does hide it but I love the grey! I've been growing the blonde out for about 18 months I think and the blonde at the ends I put a purple toner on so it makes the blonde silvery grey and I love it so much!! I don't want the hassle and expense of highlights. DH must really hate it as he offered to pay 😂

Have a few colours put through your hair so it is less obvious (works for dark hair too). Not sure how to do that at home though. Helpful.

Have you considered growing it out? Grey hair can look fab and sophisticated.

I grew mine out but it wasn't as grey as I thought. It was a nasty dull mouse colour at the back, white on the sides and gun metal grey at the top. I think there was too much going on and it looked a bit of a mess but I can't wait until I can grow it out.

Currently sporting 2 inch roots though so maybe I should just back away from this thread. 😁

I have no idea how grey I am! I am so anti grey that the slightest hint has me rushing for the hair dye! I don't even know when I went grey as I have been dyeing my hair since I was 11 and I am now 59!! I just hope I don't end up with 'brillo pad' hair like my Nan. She also used to dye her hair regularly - mind you in her day they were not known to be kind to the hair!!!

p.s I use Nice and Easy but also use Nutrisse, Oglio and some others.

Deathray do you mean 11(!) or was that a typo? If not bloody hell poor you!

What colour is your hair op? I am brunette with some grey hairs. When I reached the stage you are at I tried highlights done by my hairdresser. I liked the highlights and continued like that for a year but felt I had the same problem, I hated the brown roots against the blonde highlights so ended up colouring my hair back to brown.

After a while I got fed up with it all and decided to go natural and have never regretted it.

If you get half head highlights 6 weekly, does it all not become too blonde?

That is why I stopped dying it. I CBA with the constant touching-up, and it's really not 'natural-looking' with greying roots.

i stopped about 2 years ago, and my hair is short and salt-and-pepper. I couldn't give a toss if I look 'old' (I'm 55) - it's natural. I do dye it purple/pink/blue (whatever I fancy) occasionally; I'm purple at the moment, but it is a semi-permanent and fades within 2 weeks. The grey-white bits take the dye really well, the rest is a normal browny-purple-in-the-right-light.

Seriously, stop worrying about how it looks, and go back to natural. It suits me so much better than a dye-job.

JMAngel I think that was my problem with highlights I ended up a full blonde with horrible brown and grey roots.

I'm 37 next week and my hair dye is only lasting 3 weeks on roots (dark brown)...I use the root touch up one with a brush it's good!

I have been grey a long time (am old). I used to do the blond streaks and they worked well but for a change I have gone pillar box red and use Manic Panic. Its very easy to use and has lots of colours, but it does come off on your towels and pillows.

Used to be dark brown, now 90% grey, do a home dye back to dark brown every 2 to 3 weeks. I try to stretch it to 3 because a hairdresser friend told me I shouldn’t do it more often than monthly (because with shorter roots you’re layering dye on dye and it ends up looking blocky and fake) but I absolutely cannot bear grey roots against dark brown hair. Sometimes I eke it out to three weeks using the spray-in root colour but it feels horrible and comes off on my pillowcases...

I dye my hair with my own hair dyeing tea that I make from camomile tea, redbush tea, instant coffee and a tiny bit of turmeric. I pour the tea on clean dry hair and leave it in. I do this each time I wash my hair but it doesn't fade completely after one wash so I could easily miss dyeing it if I didn't have time. It has turned my hair from pretty much all over grey from growing back after chemo to blonde which was my colour before I lost my hair during treatment.

Pics of colour from two different angles and a before.

I use Majirel and mix up just what I need (about a teaspoon) and go around my hairline every 10 days to a fortnight with a small make-up brush. This limits my exposure, leaves the rest of my hair from becoming overly processed and means I dodge the badger. I use more as when required on the rest but find I can go a lot longer now.

It works out much more economically to keep on top of it and I mix my own formulation so I get just the right tone.

It doesn't become too blonde with dyeing it 6 weekly for me.
Because I have fairly natural looking highlights anyway with darker blonde blended with a paler blonde.
I like being blonde it makes me think of summer & sunshine.
It makes me feel pretty & confident enough to start looking for a boyfriend as I'm single.
I know other pps feel happy & confident being grey but it's not for me.

@Deathraystare I know what you mean by 'Brillo pad hair' as one of my nans had that.
She was white with frizzy curls before the age of 30!

My white hairs are a bit like hers were as I take after the Highland Scots side of her family with the tendency to frizz although my hair is more wavy than curly...

My other Nan had a Jewish background so she had natural straight black hair until she was 80, even when she died aged 91 she had some black hair left which is unusual.

I have dark hair + some grey which I have dyed every 5 weeks. The hairdresser just does the roots and the lengths are left so there isn't too much colour block. The result is the dyed grey lightens to look like highlights. Not massive so I look like a badger but enough to not be a solid wall of colour. In between colouring I use the spray on root touch which covers the grey when it starts to appear. This means I can go longer between getting it done as roots can appear as early as two weeks.

Why do we do it, tho? There is nothing more ageing than a block of dark hair, with inevitably a hint of grey at the hairline (no matter how often we dye/touch up).

Our skin colour fades slightly as we age, and gets coarser and thinner - and so does our hair. A slightly wrinkled, lived-in face with dark, 20YO hair looks daft.

I've got wrinkles, I've got (slight) jowls, a full head of auburn hair would look ridiculous on me. I'd rather be natural. I love my silver bits!

I am 36 and I dye mine every few weeks very dark brown. It costs a small fortune. I can't afford to dye it professionally, and even if I did, it wouldn't make the hair grow slower so it would need done just as often. I am tempted to switch to Poundland £1 a box dye!

My hair grows through about 50% white (it is white, not grey) and I have already decided that at 40 I am going to cut it all off very short and grow the white out, or at least see what it looks like. It will mean enduring a few months of regrowth and a very short cut for a few years, but I am sick to death of dying it every few weeks, and potentially doing this for another 2/3/4 decades. Decades.

I'm 35 with black hair so the greys are very noticable! I usually do a box dye every other sunday and I also have root spray that I use from time to time.

I'd love to 'embrace the grey' as PP have suggested, but I'm not ready yet! I look substantially younger than 35 (a blessing and a curse) so I just don't think it's time yet..

Why do we do it, tho? There is nothing more ageing than a block of dark hair, with inevitably a hint of grey at the hairline (no matter how often we dye/touch up).

ptumbi, I don't get that with the tea I make up and use each time I wash. It is not a block of dark colour either. It is transparent. You can still see natural highlights. It just gives golden lights to my hair instead of silver which makes my hair blonde toned instead of grey. If someone had darker hair they could use a different recipe, if they wanted reddish brown lights instead of golden, but it still would give transparent colour not a 'block of dark hair'. On another thread, where I mentioned my tea, a poster tried coffee on her hair in the same vein. You still could see her natural highlights and streaks, the greys just completely blended in and disappeared whereas before they stood out.

And the why not be grey? When my hair grew back after chemo it wasn't the lovely sleek silvery grey you see on people who embrace their grey hair. It was all over salt and pepper and very woolly. I couldn't have it cut in a lovely edgy style without it looking like a Brillo pad. I looked like Einstein! So I use my tea, straighteners and anti frizz products. Just so I feel more like me really. After chemo they grey came suddenly. Before I lost my hair it was blonde and silky and smooth, albeit with a few white streaks.

silvery - my hair is not silver-grey either. It's short, but salt-and-pepper. I used to dye it reddish-auburn, but it took way too much time (every 2 weeks for a PP! That cannot be good for you or the environment) - I think the Tea solution is a good one, and I might try that.

I love my silver 'slices' at the temples! And the lighter colour on my dark-brown hair now is so soft and flattering.

thenewaverage - I put a load of blonde highlights in my shoulder-length hair before I bit the bullet and stopped dying it. I wanted silver highlights but apparently the hairdressers can't do this any more (on my dark hair, anyway) so went blonder, to blend the regrowth. And then went short!

But then I like tweaking about with my hair. Different colours, styles, lengths...