highlights to cover gray hair?
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Anonymous
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I have dark brown hair with a few grays. I have tried permanent and semi-permanent color, but I don't like the uniformity of the color. I don't think it looks natural. I have asked my colorist in the past whether I could stop getting the all-over color and just use lighter brown highlights to mask the grays. She said she didn't think it would work but didn't say why. I should have asked but didn't.
Has anyone here with dark hair done this? I don't understand why it wouldn't work. I don't want to do all over color and highlights. I did that for years and it was too time consuming and expensive. |
Anonymous
Highlights and lowlights was the approach the colorist recommended when I told her I didn't want to cover the gray, just make it less noticeable. I'm happy with the results. Overall, my hair looks darker. The grays are still noticeable, but not as much. The colorist said the highlights don't cover the gray hairs. |
Anonymous
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It can work for a while to camouflage the gray, but if your hair is very dark to begin with maybe not. My stylist was honest with me when highlights wouldn't cut it any more in my medium brown hair.
I do allover color and highlights and go every 4 weeks. I don't need highlights every month, so sometimes it's just the root touch up which isn't that expensive or time consuming. |
Anonymous
| I tried using just highlights but I could still see the gray which bothered me. I now do balayage for the highlights in addition to coloring my roots. The balayage grows out better than highlights so I only redo it once every six months or so but adds the dimension I like in my color. |
Anonymous
| Hi and low lights together work very well I have an aunt who has been doing this for the past 20 years and she looks about 45 when in reality she is 70 |
Anonymous
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I've often wondered that myself, OP. Why can't you slap a lighter color over your hair, so the darker hair doesn't look different, but the grays look like subtle highlights? Hair people always shrug and look blank when I ask.
I'm one who's posted before about using henna/cassia/indigo mixes, and I can get a beautiful multi-dimensional and natural look, because the plant dyes seem to coat the hair more than they permeate it, so original color can show. You can do a rinse, too, where you are basically coating the grays, but it doesn't last. |
Anonymous
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This sounds like what I do myself. I have dark brown hair with a lot of gray. I started coloring it myself because the roots show so frequently now. The women at Sally's helped me get the color right but when I tried to match the shade it overall looked too dark. I'm using Ion semi-permanent natural light brown. It is still fairly dark. My dark hair stays dark and my gray hair looks almost highlighted. I used the natural medium brown when I didn't have to color as frequently and it had the same effect.
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Anonymous
| I had a stylist suggest highlights to cover but I figured this was just because it's more expensive and time consuming. Highlights are typically double the cost of a single process color and trickier to get what you're looking for. It takes more skill from the stylist. I'd personally stick with single process. |
Anonymous
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It's hard- but not impossible- to cover grey with highlights.
I have brown hair and wonderful grey hair too. I do color and highlights. There are many ideas for inspiration, I get my here http://newaylook.com/best-ideas-on-brown-hair-with-highlights/ I have to get my hair done every 3 weeks to keep up with the grey. I hate it! But If you are prepared for the upkeep- then yes it's possible. Pic showing my color. 
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Anonymous
| My hair stylist said we'd start with lowlights on my light brown hair to color grays. She said basically if I have 75 gray hairs it will cover so that you can only see 30. That will work for me for a while. |
Anonymous
Single process is definitely easier and cheaper. It also looks like you applied shoe polish to your head. |
Anonymous
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you can do lowlights (like highlights but going darker than your regular color) to cover some of the gray. One potential issue is how the lowlight color looks on the gray hairs vs on the already-brown hairs. It will color those 2 types of hairs differently, so something to take into account.
I have light brownish/reddish hair mixed with gray and white, and I started getting red-brown lowlights added to it. It is working for me, it diminishes the amount of gray by a lot, but there still are gray hairs. the color on my white hairs vs on my natural red-brown hairs looks different, but both colors look OK, so it works. My stylist said the advantage of this is that I don't get a hard root line of where it grows out, so I don't need color as often as I would if I were dyeing my whole head. But at some point so much of it will be white, will need to dye it all (and then maybe lowlights to break up the color). |
Anonymous
| OP again. I know now why my stylist said it couldn't be done. I talked a new stylist into doing it, and it looks great, but she literally spent over an hour searching through my hair for grays. I kept apologizing and telling her I had no idea how hard it would be. I can't ask her to do this every month (how long it will take for my grays to show again). |
Anonymous
Not with a good stylist and high quality color. |
Anonymous
+1 for balayage. I do a combination of highlights and llowlights with balayage every other time. |