I have decided to say good-bye to coloring my hair. I have been thinking about going natural for quite awhile. Pre-mature white hair runs in my family on the paternal side. My grandfather Norcross always had the prettiest white hair. I never remember him with any other color. My brother, Tom, was about 60% white when he died at age 32. I started going gray/white when I was 20. I have been coloring my hair for 10 years. It was my son, Luke, that won me over to the idea of going natural after he showed me photo after photo of very beautiful ladies with white, gray, or silver hair. He encouraged me to embrace my white hair, or whatever color it is. (My stylist says silver is the new "in" color.) I took the plunge...
I decided to go natural for several reasons:
- I am tired of touching up my roots every 10-14 days. When I started coloring my hair, I vowed to never be one of those ladies whose roots showed giving away the fact that they colored their hair.
- It took too much time to color. I did an overall dye job professionally every 3 months, which took a minimum if 2 1/2 - 3 hours. In between the my overall dye job, I touched up the roots myself...it took at least an hour.
- The cost. For my hair to look natural, I wanted different tones in it. So when I got my hair done professionally, my stylist first did an overall brown color. After she did that, she frosted my hair with highlights. The cost was $100-$125 not including the tip. The sad part was in 2 weeks I had to touch up the roots. My pretty highlights were gone at the roots. Root touch up was $6-7 every two weeks.
- Dyed hair never has the luster of natural hair. It sort of looks flat.
- Dyed hair is damaged hair.
September 22 was my last day with brown hair.
My stylist said I did not have to have that horrible growing out your hair look... you know the skunk look...white down the middle. Instead, she put on color remover which stripped a lot of my brown color out, and left a lot of yellow. She did the color remover twice. It looked like Guy Fieri's hair...only with more yellow. It was not pretty. My stylist said not to worry, we were not done yet.
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| Getty images: Guy Fieri |
She then added a pretty silver semi-permenant color to my hair...and it looked okay. Very different though.
It will take several months before my hair is completely grown out to its natural color. My hair stylist predicts it will be all grown out by March. Oh, that is such a long time! and I must confess I have been tempted to go back, but I am determined to not. I want to see what color my hair really is. Luke encourages me to not go back...he loves the new me. I think the verdict is out with Warren. He says he likes it, but doesn't he have to say that since he's my husband?
Will I look older? Maybe. But those ladies who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s are not fooling anybody with their hair color. In fact, some look ridiculous with dark hair. I have had a ton of compliments on my hair. From strangers. Who stop in the the stores...or at church...or meetings. I never had such compliments when it was brown. The compliments encourage me.
The semi-permenant color is wearing off leaving me with a yellow tinge, which I do not like. But when I cannot stand it anymore, I will have more toner applied, so I will look good again. It has taken me awhile to get used to the new color, but I am liking the new that is coming in.
"Ok- let's find all the cool white haired ladies out there! White IS a color, and it is awesome! It is like silver." -Meryl Streep
Here's to the new color...
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