50 Shades of Grey ... How to Get Silver Hair & More Importantly How to Keep It !

Nope its not about the book but what a great title for the post ...huh ?
OK maybe 10 Tips of (for)Grey Hair
We have many readers/customers from the UK, Australia & Canada - therefore in this post I have included both spellings of the word grey/gray - FYI
I've had quite a few of you ask for the 10 tips I have to help grey hair lately.
 Let me address that here so everyone can benefit from it.

There is nothing one can do to eliminate grey hair, so I do not want anyone to think that. If anyone promises that...quickly change the channel/page ! What grey hair is : hair that has no pigment 'within the individual strands of hair'  ......if you were to look at the hair through a microscope you would see it actually is colorless hair and it simply "appears gray" due to the color the other hairs that do have pigment. Grey hair takes years to switch all the way to solid Silver. ( we were taught to only call grey "silver" - a Sassoon trick).

Now I have had many people come to me over the years and ask for hair color that lasted 4-6 weeks on hair that is 80- 199% gray. They had never found anyone that could do that. That knowledge comes from knowing the proper way to color hair, that we teach on the Blog. If the proper 2-4 colors are used no matter who you are it will stick the whole time and then if you follow these 10 Rules, you should be able to make it to 5- 6 weeks . Which means that you only need to re-touch your color 7-8 times a year. That is not that often if you have grey - is it?

Lets start before you touch up your base every 6 weeks.

1. Before you color your hair you want to be sure to use one of the Malibu2000 packs, I would suggest a packet of Color Prep. Cleaning the gunk off before you color helps the color 'stick'. Use this the day before or the day 'of' your re-touch. Using the Crystal Gel packet is probably the best one for this particular reason. We provide a plastic cap with every packet from us.
2. But on the opposite end once you have your hair 'newly' touched-up, you then want to go for the opposite type and become "gentle" on the color. Using a for Color-only Shampoo - Sulfate-Free Shampoo - exclusively.
3. Going out in the sun, you must use a sun-screen, there are spray sunscreens for the hair exclusively...the sun wrecks havoc on hair color and keeping the hair color on your hair, is the way to keep it covered.
4. Gray hair, lacking pigment, lacks both the depth and the obnoxious DURP of pigmented hair. Think about that ....what needs to be done? You MUST replace what is missing from it, in order for it to look like the rest of your hair. Gray hair lacks depth and warmth . We make this silver color tinted shampoo that works KILLER ...its called BOOST and we're the only one that has SILVER colored shampoo which adds tone and shine to the hair. When you are in effect replacing the missing DURP {dominant-remaining-underlying-pigment}.  
5.  Depending on the color of your hair, the biggest category of growth in the hair Biz is colored-tinted Shampoo's. We carry one that I personally mix its called BURST in SILVER BULLET !  The advantage to getting a ''Brown Burst" is, it will deposit little bits of color on your hair, every time you shampoo. So using this at 3-4 weeks after the Re-Touch, will help cover those pesky roots without having to deal with all those other silly gadgets out there!.  We have a great selection of colors. Shampoo the hair, leave the shampoo on the hair...for 3-4-5 - even up to 10 minutes while you do other things. Then rinse. These really work I learned to make them in Academy - 20 years ago ! So the concept has been around. We made them for actors in the first 18 years now people have figured out that actors have beautifully toned hair and they want it too!  
6. I feel gray hair needs to have a fresh hair cut - at least > every 2 months. Having raggedy ends really makes the hair look frazzled and old. Always make the extra effort to keep those ends and the shape of your haircut fresh. 
7. Redheads and Grey? Red Tint on over-porous hair looks browner, BUT- - red tint on grey hair looks brighter and needs to be fixed or even better - prevented. How? Red formulas for grey hair benefit from adding a Gold or a Neutral. I most often add Neutral which means any color from the "N" Series.
8. Some of you look smashing with silver hair - like the lady above.  But that is not the norm, most of us age with the signs of grey. It always dulls the appearance and when it creeps into all of our body's hair we begin getting furious. Just as make-up improves almost anyone's appearance - so does covering the grey, think of it as the make-up for hair ! Don't you wish your make-up lasted as long as hair color? I sure do !
9. Be careful of going too dark when choosing the color you begin coloring your grey hair with if you are a brunette.  A good rule of thumb is... to begin to go lighter and lighter and lighter the goal should be to get as close to the tonal factor of grey.
10. What is the closest color to gray hair?? BLONDE ! ! So the closest you can get to Blonde the better (I'm talking as we age in the 50-60-70's)- you won't have to Re-touch as often ...  when the grey hair grows in after a couple weeks...you will have lots more time to goof around in without having to worry about having to Retouch the old haircolor ! 

• Ash does not cover gray fully, and it may create off tones. Please Avoid.
• Colors containing some warmth cover gray best such as  (LANZA) lanza is a great line for gray hair just join the group for a month I will help you with the formula the first time and then you can quit if you want. 
• If you don't want total coverage, thats great too, use Demi /Translucent /or 10Volume Developer - with the above formula gives more of a "blended" look rather than a completely Covered one..
• Maximum timing = maximum coverage. In this Blog I preach the advantages of processing the color in the more appropriate time - which is 1 hour - - not 20 minutes. They preach that for busy Colorists who have to sandwich in 25 people daily, but not letting the hair color process for the full amount of time.
• Watch for up coming new products for you to solve Covering Gray for those who do not want to learn how to cover gray, but just want a kit I have prepackaged for you.