The struggle against greying hair is real. When the first pesky strands start to appear, you may want to reach for tweezers to yank them out (this is not advisable though, as you may damage hair follicles over time). As the greys multiply and plucking is no longer a viable option, perhaps you’ll start carting out hair mascaras to cover up the peeking whites. Eventually though, home hair dyes and trips to the salon to mask those telltale signs of ageing will become a regular thing.
In the past few years, however, an intriguing new option has emerged: Grey blending.
For Asian hair, the original dark colour may be lightened, and parts of these may be further highlighted to achieve hues that are closer in tone to the existing grey hair, so that the greys blend into the other hair colours, creating a multi-dimensional effect, along with movement and depth. The grey hair will still be in the mix, but instead of standing out against hair that hasn’t gone white yet, they will now play peekaboo among a plethora of hues.
While this technique has many advantages, the top one being that greys growing out would be less noticeable, as there would now be less contrast between the lighter and darker coloured hair, there may be something more formidable at play here.
According to Prix Salon’s Linus Loh, expect to spend upwards of three hours at the salon to achieve that Insta-worthy grey blending look.
“We typically use babylights (very fine highlights that blend naturally with hair colour) or do shadow roots (where a darker colour is used at the roots so that regrowth looks more seamless). I like to work with beige-browns or pastel browns – these blend well with grey,” he said.
“The good thing about grey blending is that when your hair grows out, it looks less obvious. When you do block coverage with just one darker colour, you would see the regrowth in a week or two, and because of the stark contrast, you would need more frequent touch-ups.”