How To Go Gray Naturally (And Quit Dyeing Your Hair For Good)

I’ve been coloring my hair for a couple of decades. I started out hiding a few gray hairs, and by the time I was 50, I was using store-bought color every six to eight weeks with trips to the salon for a more professional look every three or four months. And it was fun. At first. Since my 40s, my hair has been medium brown with blond highlights, dark chestnut brown, a deep red and, for a few horrible weeks, an artificial and alarming shade of orange when I went overboard with boxed violet color.

As I approached another birthday with yet another skunk stripe of roots claiming my attention, I decided I’d had enough. And I’m not alone.

According to a 2022 survey, more than half of women start coloring their hair to hide the gray by the time they’re 45. But here’s the thing — four in 10 will stop coloring their hair by the time they’re 60.

My friend Kathy said bye-bye to coloring her hair about two years ago. “I heard about Silver Sisters, and it wasn’t just about going gray — it was a positive way of looking at it,” says Kathy, 65. “They posted pictures and they looked fabulous, and I started letting it grow. It helps to have a certain attitude — I’m a Silver Sister — and that website is a bunch of bad-ass women. I don’t use the term ‘gray’ very often.”

Three options

I was intrigued about becoming a Silver Sister, but I thought I only had two options — rock a super-short cut to get rid of the dyed hair, or deal with that graying skunk stripe for months. My hair stylist, Abbie Schmidt, suggested another avenue: coloring my currently red hair to bring it back to its natural color and add light blond highlights, with the goal of minimizing the contrast while my natural color came in.

“I love helping women go natural,” says Abbie, 22. “It’s all about confidence in yourself. If you feel better about yourself with your natural color, then that’s what you should do!”

The process

The actual hair coloring process was more complicated than I expected. I thought Abbie would simply dye my hair back to its original shade, but you can’t color dark red hair a lighter shade in one step. “There’s a hair color level system,” says Abbie. “Ten is the lightest and 1 is the darkest, and to get a gray, which is one of the lighter colors, you have to be at an 8 or 9, but you have to go through all of the colors to get the hair lighter.”

What does that mean in plain English? That if you’ve dyed your hair a dark color for years, like me, it’s going to take some time to take your hair through those different levels with a goal of coming out lighter. “It usually can’t be done in one session,” says Abbie. “And if someone doesn’t know what she’s doing, she could easily fry off your hair with bleach.” (No thank you!)

The process included: