Learn how to transition from dyed red hair to natural gray with a clear, step-by-step process. Tips for blending, maintenance, and embracing your gray journey.
I decided to go gray.
This is something I have been thinking about for about five years now, but until recently I never advanced it more than the “thinking about it” phase.
I have dyed my hair basically my entire adult life. Short, long, in-between, except for a little while in the ’90s when I had a spiral perm (anyone else remember those?) my hair has been dyed no less than every six weeks.
My hair has spent the last 10 years getting gray at the crown. The back and sides, however, didn’t have much gray hair at all until about three years ago.
I had discussed with my stylist up in New York (who is a color genius) going gray. He discouraged me with the standard stylist line, “You’re too young to go gray.”
I allowed myself to listen to that for a few reasons:
1. My hair was dyed and highlighted to a beautiful color and always looked simply stunning.
2. The back and sides of my head did not have much gray hair. I’d have looked like Cruella de Vil married a skunk and then had had a love-child with a light top/darker sides and back.
Fast forward a few years, and our move to Florida. I continued to use my color formula down here at the local Goldwell salon. My hair wasn’t dyed/highlighted/toned locally like my old stylist in New York did it, however. I knew I was dissatisfied with the way my hair looked that first year as the Florida sun really does a number on red hair.
You will find people mostly dye to blonde or dark hair down in Florida. If a blonde fades or is sun enhanced, oh well that looks good in the sun, and dark hair doesn’t really appear to fade as much. My red hair though? I ended up so light a few times that is looked gold! And, as a cool toned person, gold is really not my color.
In Florida, all my hair that was not being highlighted (every other dye job) really needed to be colored red so as the red hair color did not look washed out. That was not happening as “that’s not how we do it.” And, a toner (demi-permanent color) needed to be used to pull out and see those lovely caramel highlights. The only Goldwell salon in the area (an international hair color which made it easy to get my roots done when we travel) was where I was going, and they used a “gloss” which adds shine (you can buy hair gloss for home use, this is the one I use), but did it have toner in it? I think so, but they definitely did not do the moist-heat to draw out the highlight color with a toner.
I did not realize how muddy, washed out and blah my hair looked down here until I went back to the Buffalo-area and had my old stylist color and highlight my hair. The results were spectacular! But, as there is no direct flight from Pensacola to Buffalo, and even if there were, flying 3000 round-trip miles to get my hair done every three weeks would have been excessive even for me. I was not going back to my New York State stylist for regular hair coloring.
I went back to my hairdresser down here, and once again brought up going gray. I had mentioned it a few times prior, and she was not interested in transitioning me (to be fair, it isn’t her forte).
I spent the next few weeks after returning to Florida from the Buffalo-area thinking about my hair.
I was not happy with the current finished product, and I was paying an awful lot of money to be unhappy. That Pensacola salon is the most expensive salon using Goldwell products I have been to anywhere in the world to have my hair dyed. Heck, I was in Ft Lauderdale just a few months prior, had my roots done and a blow-out/style, and the Ft Lauderdale salon cost less than 50% of what I was being charged in Pensacola!
I didn’t really want to go traditional blonde or very dark (which would have been fine in the Florida sun) as the would have required the same every three weeks upkeep for the dark hair and I was not interested in blonde. I did not particularly care for the coloring process at the local Goldwell salon, and instead of feeling pampered and rejuvenate it felt like a chore having my hair done. I could not help but think, “Why am I still doing this?”
So, after careful consideration on going gray (and a can of one day gray hair color to see how it would look), I decided, “WTH! I am going to do this!”
There are a number of ways to go gray:
● Cold turkey: You simply stop dying your hair and allow it to grow out, graying naturally. I knew this was not right for me. The stark line of demarcation grow out would drive me insane and I’d be back in the stylist chair getting my hair dyed but fast.
● Dye strip technique: This is where you stop dying everything except your hair part. With this method no one notices you are going gray as the gray in your part is still being dyed. After so many months (or years) of the rest of your hair growing out (while you continue to dye only the part), you finally flip your part to the other side showing your natural gray, and then let that dyed stripe grow out. Intriguing, but what about when I pulled my hair straight back? I also change my part fairly frequently.
● Getting a pixie cut or shaving your head: Nope. Nada. No can do.
● Using a wig to hid the gray: You allow your hair to grow out naturally, but use a wig to cover the process. One day you leave off the wig for a ta-da! moment. This is great for women who are working. I do not work outside the home, and it gets hot down in Florida. The last thing I wanted was to wear a wig in the heat.
● Gray blending or gray transitioning: Ahhhh now we are talkin’! I follow Jack Martin on IG and saw some of the gray transformations he has done. I seriously (I hate to tell you how seriously) considered making an appointment and flying out to California to spend a few days there while he took me from red to silver/gray. Except, I’d have needed 8-12 months of roots to go to him, and there was no way I’d last that long.
I started looking all over the Pensacola area for someone to transition me to gray. I was having no luck, so expanded the search to New Orleans, Atlanta, Ft Lauderdale, Orlando … basically someone/somewhere close enough to spend a few days while my hair was transformed, and that I could go back to semi regularly to complete the process.
The last place I searched was on local Facebook pages, and that is where I hit pay dirt.
There were several threads in a local Facebook group where someone asked for recommendations for gray transitioning! I looked up all those recommended stylist names and developed a list. I then checked out their portfolios. There were a number of very promising leads.
I also found out there are “color correction” experts. And, since my hair had been dyed red for a long, long time – and red is the most difficult color to correct or transition – I thought it might be a good idea to search for one of those.
That list was much shorter. Only a few locals specialized in color correction and had great reviews. And low and behold, one of them was also #1 on my gray transition list! Her portfolio was fantastic, so I decided to make the call.
I said I could come in for a consultation, and she was amenable to that. She also gave me the option of sending photos instead. I sent the photos and she set me up with an appointment for the following week.
I asked if there was anything I could do to prep my hair for this procedure. She told me to deep condition. I had also run a 6 wash series of K18 hair mask knowing I was going to be asking someone to transition my hair.
If you have never tried it, K18 is a peptide product. I first used it about a year prior when I thought my hair looked a bit damaged (and it had been). You use it for six washes in a row. I usually wash my hair every three days, so this took several weeks to complete the regiment. After you wash your hair, you emulsify a little bit in your hands, and then apply the mask from your hands to your hair to coat the hair, and wait 4 minutes before applying any other product. On this round, I conditioned my hair after the 4 minutes, and then towel dried and sprayed leave-in conditioner. I then used my heat protection and styling products.
The hair stylist I went to was great. I walked in with about an inch of roots (probably less). I asked if that was enough, and she assured me it was plenty. She explained what she was going to do, I knew she used K18 (which is reassuring with all the bleach being used on my hair), and she and her assistant did a fabulous job.
She added dark and light to my hair via a series of highlights and low-light foils while not covering too much of the natural gray. I came out with some brown, blonde, red, gray, and white hair. I did not require a “chemical haircut” and she did not pull the color out with a color corrector. The first session was approximately 5.5 hours.
My next appointment was made for eight weeks later. She told me after that appointment I would end up closer to a product of brown, blonde, gray, and white, because… surprise! When I started growing out my hair, it wasn’t all gray and it wasn’t all salt and pepper. It turns out a fair amount of my hair is white, and the front of my hair is completely white!
Very generally speaking, people with red hair (or a lot of red hair pigment mixed into brown or blonde) or people who go gray later in life will end up with white hair. While white hair is lovely, against my dyed red hair those white roots made me look like I had a lot of bald spots on my head. That was another reason I was anxious to get on with a transition. I had purchased red hair powders, but none of them were quite a match. It was fine for a distance illusion, but up close you could see (well, I could see) that there was some sort of red substance in my hair. Reminded me of the guys who shoe polished their heads in the ’70s.
When my new hair stylist sent me off with a possum or calico look, I must say the silver/white roots looked a whole lot better. Because I am gray transitioning, a lot of the roots are not covered when my hair is dyed (highlighted/low-lighted). The mixed color highlights created an optical illusion where those silver/white roots were not so prominent.
I continued to grow the roots out before heading back to the salon for appointment number two eight weeks later.
Note: This is the first in a series of posts about my gray transition journey. I hope you will stay with me for my monthly update on the highs, and lows, of transitioning to grey/silver/white. My multicolored hair journey!
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