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10.31.2024
Transitioning to Gray Hair: Help Your Clients Go Gray Gracefully
By: Zara Kenyon
There are four types of gray-haired clients. First, you have those who book in for regular root touch-ups, ensuring silvery regrowth is kept under wraps with a permanent hair color. The second type prefer a demi-permanent tint that blends silver strays with their lengths. Then, there are the clients who prefer to leave their grays au naturel, simply letting time do its thing.
And, finally, you have the clients whose goal is to embrace their grays wholeheartedly. There’s no hesitation – they’re focused on transitioning to gray hair as quickly as possible. Tired of disguising the inevitable – or ready to try this season’s silver hair trend – they’re looking for ways to go gray gracefully. And they need your expertise.
For these clients, the trick is to find a smooth and seamless route to all-over gray, so when their regrowth starts to come through, it blends imperceptibly with the mid-lengths and ends. Depending on your client’s base color, this could mean they need highlights, lowlights or a soft root shadow. Learn every technique, so you can achieve the glowiest gray looks going…
1. Transitioning to Gray Hair with Highlights
Gray tends to be more noticeable on dark hair versus on a light blonde base, as the silver strands create a bold contrast – much like blonde highlights on brown locks. For this reason, interweaving ash blonde and gray highlights can be a clever way to blend blonde or brunette clients’ grays. Then, as the regrowth comes through, the strokes of lighter shades will seamlessly intertwine.
To try this technique, add gray blonde highlights with BlondorPlex to reinforce hair’s internal bonds. Apply ribbons from root to tip, tucked in between grays for a seamless finish. Then, add a Koleston Perfect glossing service by blending the target shade with an even ratio of Welloxon Perfect 1.9% and Color Service Post Hair Color Treatment. Some of our favorite Koleston Perfect gray blondes include 9/81, 10/86 and, if your client prefers a deeper tone, add a little 7/18 to your formula.
From there, you will need to keep building up the volume of gray highlights. This may take a number of sessions, and you’ll want to leave at least a month between lightening appointments. Over time, the brunette-to-gray or blonde-to-gray ratio will begin to tip more gray, until your client is working an all-over silver ‘do.
Image Credit: @jessdoesyourhair | @izzieshaircreations
2. Opting for Ash Blonde Hues
The lightness of blonde hair means that white regrowth can sometimes appear less visible, allowing your client to grow out their grays with a softer demarcation line. However, this may not be the case if the tone through the lengths is too contrasting. Because grays tend to have cool undertones, warm, golden lengths can be jarring against silver roots.
For this reason, we recommend switching to ash hues for blonde clients who want to grow out their roots. This way, their natural regrowth remains intact without a tonal clash. Try demi-permanent Color Touch, which comes in a range of ashy blondes.
3. Moving Away From Permanent Color
Express Gray Blending
Speaking of demi-permanent; this is the perfect product for clients who no longer want the maintenance or full coverage of a permanent color. Transitioning to gray is made easier with a Color Touch Gray Blending service, which offers a shine-boosting tint that gradually fades out of the hair in 24 washes. This means they can still achieve up to 70% coverage, but with a low-commitment finish that camouflages and tones down the brightness of the gray.
The color blends with the strands of hair that still have natural pigment, or hair that has been permanently colored on the lengths and ends. This means your client can slowly grow out the permanent color on the lengths and ends, without their gray roots glowing white and bright. Plus, because the color only takes 15 minutes to develop with heat, your clients will spend less time in the salon chair – and more time enjoying their glossy hair.
Premium Express Gray Blending
If their locks are chemically sensitized, combine with the ColorMotion+ Pre-Color Treatment and Post-Color Treatment, then finish with the ColorMotion+ Structure+ Mask.
4. Transitioning to Gray Hair with Face-Framing Highlights
Every client’s gray pattern is entirely unique. If they see a lot of silver through the face-framing layers, you could try adding a gunmetal money-piece to make it look less patchy. This means focusing chunky highlights at the front of the hair, in a similar shade to their natural gray. You could then add a few extra gray streaks through the rest of the hair for a harmonious blend.
To nail the look, stroke a hair lightener, like Blondor Freelights, through the face-framing ribbons first, starting where the gray regrowth ends. Add the rest of the highlights, then allow to develop to the correct underlying tone. Finish with a demi-permanent Color Touch toner that’s shade-matched to your client’s grays. Apply it all over for root-to-tip coolness, so when more grays grow through, they appear imperceptible.
Image Credit: @hairxjojo | @lucianbusuioc
3 More Tips For Transitioning to Gray Hair
1. Avoid Block Coloring with Permanent Color
While a single-process, block color with a permanent formula might cover your client’s grays, it also resets their transition, so they have to start growing out their silver roots once more. If blending is what they crave, offer a Color Touch Gray Blending Service.
2. Suggest At-Home Treatments
Thanks to pollution, gray hair on the lengths and ends has a tendency to turn yellow. That’s why any client going gray gracefully will want a purple shampoo in their kit. Suggest they use INVIGO Blonde Recharge Cool Blonde Shampoo to cool brassy locks down. They could also try our color-depositing Color Fresh Mask in Pearl Blonde for an added moisture boost.
3. Turn Up the Hydration
Speaking of a moisture boost; gray hair needs all the hydration it can get. This is because, over time, the follicles produce less oil, resulting in drier, coarser strands. Ensure your clients are treating graying locks to a weekly treatment mask. Oil Reflections Luminous Reboost Mask will pamper parched hair back to its radiant best.
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