Sail On Silver Girl : Growing Out Gray Hair, How To #4

In my Feb 17 post I wrote about the method of dying only your part while letting gray come in underneath. I gave that a try but when I abandoned the effort and dyed my hair again, I decided to let one small patch of silver come in as a test, and a nod to my natural color. That patch was not the top most hair next to my face, but was the next layer down and mostly hidden from view. The streak of silver became a bit of a secret, exposed sometimes depending how my hair fell, or showing when I brushed my hand through my hair or pulled my hair back in a clip.

Using Silver Stripes To Facilitate Growing In The Gray

I dyed my roots every two to three weeks and would exclude the secret patch of white hair and, over time, a few of its neighboring hairs so the patch of gray got incrementally larger. Finally, in a step toward going all gray, I changed my part to fall right in the middle of those silver hairs and pulled half of them over to the other side of my face. At that point the silver patch was divided in two with strands exposed on both sides of my face.

Growing the gray streak, increasing the number of hairs in the streak, and then switching my part so silver was exposed on both sides of my face were all steps toward letting all of the gray come in. I was getting used to it, and so were the people in my life.

These three pictures were taken the same night in 2016. I grew in a silver stripe just under the top hair on the right side of my face and it showed or didn't show based on how my hair fell naturally or was pulled behind my ear.

I mention this option - growing in a streak of gray - both because the streak was kind of cool, but also because having those silver streaks on either side of my face became an unexpected tool when I started growing out the gray in earnest. Since my part was increasingly white and stood out, I could (and can) just pull the full length silver hair near my face up over my head and hold it with a clip, and the silver stripes help mask the growing strip of gray down the middle of my head. In the early months especially, this was a great trick to minimize the skunk stripe.