How to deal with individual silver hairs?

September 11, 2022 8:41 AM

I am looking to dye individual silver hairs, for professional reasons. However, I only have about twenty of them currently on my head - not worth, in my view, dying my whole head of hair. How do other people deal with this situation?

I have long hair, so these hairs are long - about a foot or two. I tried picking up one of those 'touch up sticks' but it was hideous and waxy and clearly meant only for roots in between dye jobs, not to deal with a foot long hair. Are there ways I can deal with it at home? If I go to a salon, what do I ask for? Is this a service people even normally do ask for? How much will it likely cost me to deal with?

posted by corb to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (29 answers total)

Only 20? If any are even noticeable, I'd just yank them out.
posted by invincible summer at 8:49 AM on September 11, 2022 [27 favorites]

I have enough silver hairs that someone at the grocery store complimented me on my highlights!

When I had just a handful of silver hairs, my friends told me that where one dies, five go to their funeral. Translation: leave them alone.
posted by aniola at 8:57 AM on September 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

I pluck them. I haven’t noticed that more grow in.
posted by freshwater at 9:06 AM on September 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

I assumed it was a philosophical approach rather than a physical approach.
posted by aniola at 9:08 AM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

My sister, no kidding, used a black sharpie.
posted by sixswitch at 9:09 AM on September 11, 2022 [14 favorites]

If it's just a few, you have the option of ignoring them/pretending you've always had them. I know a couple of girls (twins, in fact) with black hair. They're late 20s-ish now, but they've had a sprinkling of silver strands the entire time I've known them, since age 7 or 8.
posted by stormyteal at 9:12 AM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you don't want to treat just a few hairs to match the majority, you can turn the majority silver to match the few. For professional reasons, of course.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:21 AM on September 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think this is a thing you can just go to the salon & say help me deal with this. When I eventually have to do this (I can get away with it a bit longer fingers crossed) I'd go to an expensive salon in the nearest city with good reviews. The kind of place you have to be good at your job already before you get hired. And then I would just see what they say.
posted by bleep at 9:48 AM on September 11, 2022

You sort of can't deal with them. (Except by removing them, like other people have said.)

The problem is that silver/white/grey hair is more dye-resistant than hair that still has colour. And so to affect it, you are definitely going to have to affect the rest of your hair.

You could choose to dye your entire head with a somewhat paler shade of your natural colour. (Like if your hair is naturally brown-black, dye it dark brown.) That would end up looking fairly natural, because everybody's hair has some colour variation and so the slightly paler strands would not look odd. But doing that will affect the texture and colour of all your hair, which you may not want, and it will require maintenance. With only 20 silver hairs, it's probably not worth it.

The trouble with going to a salon, as bleep suggested above, is that salons have a strong incentive to lock you in to repeated colour, like, touchups every six weeks. You should think long and hard before you get on that train :)
posted by Susan PG at 9:55 AM on September 11, 2022 [6 favorites]

I was thinking Sharpie! They come in different colors, so brown or yellow might also be options. If you try this, let us know if it stands up to shampoo -- I bet it will, at least for a while.

If you get it on your skin: try alcohol to remove it.
posted by amtho at 10:00 AM on September 11, 2022

Could you snip those 20 strands shorter?
posted by ellerhodes at 10:04 AM on September 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

What color is your hair? My sisters have light brown hair and used rinse-in color or sometimes dye, which turned the white hair blond/brown and didn't really affect the brown hair, so it just made highlights. I had black hair and went gray early. I know someone with similar hair who used a deep auburn dye and it made really pretty auburn highlights that sparkled.

You'll get more, start thinking about how you want to deal with that. I never dyed my hair, it was salt & pepper in my 40s. Black hair goes white, not the brown-gray mix that some people really dislike. I hate maintenance and it looked fine, so took no action.
posted by theora55 at 10:04 AM on September 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

I’ve had the odd grey hair for a decade plus and one, odd strand in the middle of the back of my head, well hidden by other layers of hair. Now the grey is starting to be a bit more pervasive and I started to get highlights to blend the grey into overall lighter bits. We didn’t change my base colour so I don’t need frequent touching up to blend the roots. I just get the highlights refreshed every 4 months or so. There are enough highlights that the grey just doesn’t stand out as grey. My expectation is that I can keep that going for the next 5-10 years at which point more drastic measures may be called for.
posted by koahiatamadl at 10:06 AM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would try the Sharpie first. If it looks bad, you can just pluck them out. And although I totally support your choice to do whatever you want with your own head, if it’s just to mollify The Man, I do seriously question whether 20 hairs will even make a difference. This is probably something that only you are noticing.
posted by HotToddy at 10:09 AM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you have eternal patience, you could consider grabbing a box of eyebrow dye (or regular dye if you don’t mind wasting the majority of the box) and dying each one individually- down to encasing each strand in its own foil. This would be relatively simple, but tedious.

If your hair isn’t sharpie colored, Stila Stay All Day eyeliner will probably have a color match for you.
posted by haplesschild at 10:59 AM on September 11, 2022

Are you sure they're visible to other people? In my experience a lone gray surrounded by dark hair usually just looks like a strand that caught the light unless you go out of your way to investigate it.
posted by space snail at 11:11 AM on September 11, 2022

Response by poster: My hair is dark brown/black, and the hairs are absolutely silver, not gray - like, think glint-in-the-sunlight-sparkle-like-a-unicorn fantasy silver, like if you dyed your hair silver to look like a witch-princess, that is the color they would be.

To clarify a little: I don't need help feeling good about them, and once I am done with a particular part of my life I will embrace my silver witch-princess life, this is for anti-ageism professional reasons. I am entering a field where anti-ageing treatments, particularly for women, are de rigeur, I am generally opposed to them and so have never bothered to learn how to do any of them.
posted by corb at 11:19 AM on September 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

I wonder if the Just For Men kits for beards would be a good use for this.
posted by stowaway at 11:56 AM on September 11, 2022

Try a "Just for Men" dye in a tube. (Mascara spoolie targets individual strands.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:03 PM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

A hairdresser might groan about it, but you can certainly have it done at a salon, just say you want them to match your greys to your hair and want them hand painted (idk if that’s a salon term but yeah).

If you have someone in your life who can help you, it’s doable at home, too - at a supply place like Sally’s, you could get a less-damaging demi-permanent like Wella Color Touch and a low volume peroxide, and a brush and mixing pot, and have your friend or person paint the hairs individually. Would start at the face framing ones, and the ones at the crown.

If you don’t have anyone to help you and want to save money, yeah the easiest way to do it is to do your whole head (same products) then ONLY do regrowth eg monthly.

In between dyes, you’ll have grey roots - so you’ll probably want to use a temporary spray to cover them until you can dye them again. (Some people actually go to salons to dye roots every TWO WEEKS which is $$$ and nuts imo. Or they dye their own hair that frequently which is how you fry it.) Also look into styles where regrowth is more hidden (eg bangs help tons that way).

Dark hair with minimal grey is the most annoying scenario. Over 50% and it’s somehow easier, you just do the whole head. Blondes are lucky their greys look like highlights. Bummer.

Ah aha you’ll also need to invest in quality conditioners and hair treatments because of the damage. So olaplex 3 (I guess there are comparable alternatives now), and a protein-heavy conditioner.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:34 PM on September 11, 2022

A salon could do this but it’s not worth the expense. I would use Just For Men or a root touch up kit (the one with dye NOT the root concealer makeup). Both are designed for grey hair and will give you a small amount of dye with a little brush so you can just do those hairs. You even don’t have to worry about having a perfect colour match since you are doing so little.
posted by vanitas at 1:37 PM on September 11, 2022

If you opt for coloring the whole head, DIY temporary root touch-up can be spray, mascara, powder, stick, brush...
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:39 PM on September 11, 2022

Can you gather all the silver hairs up yourself without missing any? If so, you could use Naturcolor to dye them at home. Naturcolor does not smell. They have specific instructions for handling silver/gray. You can make up small batches of it — so one box can go a long way — and you can mix colors to get a better match. You'd just need clips, to clip away all the dark hair and pick out the silver, and maybe a sectioning comb with a pointy tip that make it easier to retrieve individual hairs, and a small makeup brush (like a paintbrush) to paint on the dye.

p.s. Don't pluck them, you could damage the root that way.

[Edited to retrieve my p.s.]
posted by Violet Blue at 1:40 PM on September 11, 2022

I have a few wiry white hairs that stick out from my dark hair. I just run a mascara wand Down them lengthwise whenever there’s a few that are bothering me. It covers up the colour contrast and tames them at the same time!
posted by exquisite_deluxe at 1:48 PM on September 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

My wife will spend about 20 minutes a week searching through her hair and plucking out the grey ones. It's a stopgap because eventually the grey will win.
posted by zardoz at 3:17 PM on September 11, 2022

I have dark brown hair with a sprinkling of grays. I just dye my whole head using a demi-permanent dye in a brown that's lighter than my natural color. The grays come out looking like light brown highlights, and the rest of my hair stays approximately its regular color. Because there's no bleaching involved it doesn't change the texture of my hair very much. If you're not used to coloring your hair I would go to a salon at least the first time, but it's also definitely something you could do at home.
posted by Mender at 3:34 PM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Seconding demi-permanent dye, it's easy to do yourself, inexpensive, and it just fades out gradually depending on how often you wash your hair. I stopped using it a couple of years ago after I retired. I used Umberto Beverly Hills UColor.
posted by mareli at 6:01 PM on September 11, 2022

I wouldn't dye my entire head for 20 or so gray hairs. Committing to covering grey can be pretty expensive, and dealing with the eventual lines of demarcation (especially in long hair!) is a pain.

If I were just covering up a small amount for professional reasons, I would use the root touch-up mascara recommended above.

Good luck and I hope you get the result you're looking for!
posted by Space Kitty at 9:15 PM on September 11, 2022

Semi-permanent color-depositing conditioner: multiple brands available. (I can't get that last one to link to the "espresso" color but there is one.) Klenditioner is how I maintain my magical red hair, and it works well--just need to be careful about your tile etc. and rinse right away. You could apply it with a mascara wand, or just do your whole head if the color matches enough.
posted by emkelley at 10:41 AM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]