Grey Hair At Young Age

[Vanille_]

I have a question. I'm 25... At around 22, I started getting my first greys. I have several now throughout my hair. But they aren't grey- they are white I guess? Translucent would be the word I would think. So, is the color of my sparkles now a sign of their color later? I love this color but I'm not sure if this is the true color it will be. Can anyone tell me from experience the answer to this?

[natural_shine]

I'm 23, I have white hair.

I'm guessing blonder people like me get directly white hairs. While only brunettes get grey and after that white.

[carolinaberry]

I'm 33 and the "grey" hairs I get are shiny silver/white, not grey. I would be thrilled if they indicate the color of hair I will have as I age.

[xoerincolleen]

I'm 20 and have a relatively small white streak at my right temple that started developing a few years ago. All of mine are WHITE...I hope that means all of it will be!

[Vanille_]

I'm wondering if it isn't just a fluke - like somehow these hair turn white at this age for a reason.

[Kiwiwi]

Hmm I don't know if that's the colour it will be later on. I don't think one can say that for sure, just have to see.
I have a few hairs that are indeed simply white. Not grey. And my sister who is 31 has had many white hairs over the years, quite visible (she has dark hair like me too). What I notice from my mother is that it varies in places on the head. Some spots are white, some grey and some still her natural dark brown. I think it's different for everyone and differen with every year passing.

[Tia2010]

The ones I have peeking through are white. I think they have a pretty shine and sparkly look to them... But I'm just not ready to embrace them yet.

My mother and aunt both started going white and sparkly very young. My aunt has had an all over beautiful white color since about her mid 20's. My mom keeps her colored with a blond wash to avoid the all white look.

[gonzobird]

A friend of mine told me theres no such thing as grey hair. Its all white. Its just what its next to that makes it look grey. like next to ashy blonde.... Don't know how much I believe that. But color is what you are comparing it to.....
Anyways... Im 33 and have a few white hairs. I work in a salon and I am growing out my natural color. Everyone there is pretty cool about it but a few are like,"its about time you color that hair!!! Theres grey hairs in there. " Yeah . theres like 20. And I like them. :) So whatever. (I'm NOT a stylist. Im a receptionist and clients ask ME what products to get for their hair)

Sorry for the rant. I hope my head turns white, too :)

[carolinaberry]

A friend of mine told me theres no such thing as grey hair. Its all white. Its just what its next to that makes it look grey. like next to ashy blonde.... Don't know how much I believe that. But color is what you are comparing it to.....
Anyways... Im 33 and have a few white hairs. I work in a salon and I am growing out my natural color. Everyone there is pretty cool about it but a few are like,"its about time you color that hair!!! Theres grey hairs in there. " Yeah . theres like 20. And I like them. :) So whatever. (I'm NOT a stylist. Im a receptionist and clients ask ME what products to get for their hair)

Sorry for the rant. I hope my head turns white, too :)

I've seen some women with beautiful grey hair...some uniformly steely grey, some uniformly, a "dove" grey...some a greyish silver, some silvery white, some matte white...I think it can be lovely.

I'm not ready to embrace it yet because my skin tone looks better with darker hair.

[Rini]

I started going silver at 16. My hair now is what I would call a white/silver colour pretty much all over (except the old dyed blonde parts). My hair colour before I started going silver was blonde. I never really had the look of "steel grey", although my Mum did (she had naturally dark hair). I think the silver hairs are translucent, but next to other hairs with pigment they take on a bit of that colour. I have a microscope pic in my album showing this in my own hair:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/picture.php?albumid=847&pictureid=38116

[Ocelan]

I have a few grays or rather white translucent ones, but since I've only been dye free for less than half a year, I don't yet notice them so well.

My DBF (he's 35) has a lot of "grays" in his beard, front of hair and some throughout the the rest of the hair aswell. Or I wouldn't really call them grays as they seem to be very light colored gray or white. They just look a bit more gray against his medium brown colored hair. Oh he would look so cool with a full head of white hair :D

Since I haven't seen a lot of my grays yet, I'll turn to my grandmothers for reference. One of them had quite blonde hair when she was younger (a little hard to tell from black and white photos) and when she was old she has very light gray, almost white hair. Then again my other grandmother had very blonde hair when she was under 10, quite brown and constantly darkening hair when she was an adult, and only started getting gray after 80 years old. She had partially dark brown hair and partially dark gray hair when she dies at 90.

It will be quite interesting to see what direction my hair will turn to be. :) I had the same very blonde when I was little (like many do, due to darkening thanks to testosterone in puberty) and my hair has been darkening slowly ever since. No matter what I will get, I'll take it, since I'm on my way to natural color anyway and don't plan to dye anymore (except maybe a streak here or there with a bold color that washes off if I'm feeling wild :p )

[auburntressed]

I started going silver at 16. My hair now is what I would call a white/silver colour pretty much all over (except the old dyed blonde parts). My hair colour before I started going silver was blonde. I never really had the look of "steel grey", although my Mum did (she had naturally dark hair). I think the silver hairs are translucent, but next to other hairs with pigment they take on a bit of that colour. I have a microscope pic in my album showing this in my own hair:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/picture.php?albumid=847&pictureid=38116
WOW! I think that picture also shows that your hair is amazingly healthy and in excellent condition. And I love how sparkly and shiny it looks. Just wow. How did you get a microscope picture of your hair? I would love to do this for mine.

[carolinaberry]

I started going silver at 16. My hair now is what I would call a white/silver colour pretty much all over (except the old dyed blonde parts). My hair colour before I started going silver was blonde. I never really had the look of "steel grey", although my Mum did (she had naturally dark hair). I think the silver hairs are translucent, but next to other hairs with pigment they take on a bit of that colour. I have a microscope pic in my album showing this in my own hair:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/picture.php?albumid=847&pictureid=38116
Wow! Your hair is gorgeous!

[carolinaberry]

My husband is 31 and has a lot of white hairs. His granddad was completely white-haired (not silver) by 35. My husband and I have fairly similar natural hair colors-md/dk browns...my hairs are silvery and his are matte white. No grey for either of us.

[NoRush]

I'm 26 and I started getting a few (2 or 3 :P) "gray" hairs in my late teens, now there're a few more and they're wiry and shiny white, I think they come form scalp damage more than age in my case (seborreic dermatitis for yeeeeeeears :rant:), all women on my mother's side of the family have/had white crown and jet black at the nape :( not looking forward to that.

[Rini]

Thanks auburntressed and carolinaberry :flowers:

My DH has a microscope attached to his pc and we just put it on my head one day :D I took scalp shots too...but they were kinda weird looking!

[newbeginning]

I have naturally dark strawberry blonde hair. I've had "greys" since my late teens. I put grey in quotes because now that I think about it the greys are actually white. I've seen others with dark hair with more of a grey colour instead of white. Maybe the colour of grey depends on hair colour?

[torrilin]

We talk about going grey, but from watching my dad and mom do it... Yep, all "grey" hairs are white or ivory.

On my dad (pinkish skin, cobalt blue eyes, natural dark ash brown hair) the "greys" were bright white. They can sometimes get a dingy yellow tinge from pollution or something. And as is somewhat common, he started going grey in his teens. By the time I was born, he was 29 and a very solid salt and pepper. By age 45-50, silvery white... not because of the colored hairs left because there really weren't many, but because it's such a bright cool toned and shiny white. He still looks pretty young for his age (64) and often women will compliment mom on her husband's blonde hair.

My mom is a good example of another very typical and extreme way of going grey. Where dad started greying very young, mom has always been hugely anti hair dye. And her greys didn't start coming in til about age 50. If she leaves 'em alone, it looks like she's got natural blonde highlights at her temples. Her "greys" are an ivory shade between pure white and classic blonde. Now that she's 62, she's still not really salt and pepper. She's getting streakier, but it will take decades more for her to go fully "grey" because she greys so slowly.

Most of us will not be as extreme as either of my parents :). But for most of us, going grey isn't going to be some horrid and ugly thing. It's generally really pretty and sparkly.

[Miss Maisie]

My mom has dark hair, and with her greys she's definitely got the whole "steely grey" look going on. Some is steel grey, some is dark, and there's a little white in there, too. It looks beautiful!

My dad has very dark hair, but it's going pretty white at this point. His older brother has white hair, too, as do his parents.

My hair seems to be more like my dad's. It's very dark, but my white hairs are blindingly snow white, as opposed to my mom's steel grey. It will be interesting to me to see how it plays out. My mom's grandpa had the whole dark hair + steel grey mixed in until he died (in his 80s). Will I have that or will I have the snow white hair of my dad's family? This is like a big science experiment for me :)

[Nikinka]

I am 25 and I have some white hair too... i have had it from 18 i think...

[MiamiPineapple]

It is normal for many people to get a few grays in their 20s. I have a grouping of them right in front. They are much more obvious on dark hair sadly...

[Vampyria]

I started going silver at 16. My hair now is what I would call a white/silver colour pretty much all over (except the old dyed blonde parts). My hair colour before I started going silver was blonde. I never really had the look of "steel grey", although my Mum did (she had naturally dark hair). I think the silver hairs are translucent, but next to other hairs with pigment they take on a bit of that colour. I have a microscope pic in my album showing this in my own hair:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/picture.php?albumid=847&pictureid=38116

This looks so beautiful! Like gold and silver.

My hair is medium to dark brown and those few greys I found also looked totally white.

[lapushka]

All the "gray" hairs that I have, which are scarcely sprinkled throughout my hair, are white. I don't know why. I'm a blonette, so maybe that's why it's going white, not gray.

[letibear]

I would get a few random grey hairs as a teenager that I'd always pluck out. At 20 or so, they stopped coming back. Not sure if it's because they grew back as my natural hair color, or because the follicles wised up and decided not to grow at all anymore. :shrug: But I haven't seen any since.

[ladonna]

I have dark brown hair, my greys are more of a golden reddish blonde. At first I was pretty confused as to why I had hair this color until I figured out that my hair is going grey. I had to ask on the renegrey thread to find out the answer. I didn't like the color at first but I'm fine with it now since the hairs look like highlights. I wish more people had natural hair because so many of us start thinking we are freaks of nature when we get greys in our 20 's when really its pretty average.

[shutterpillar]

I am almost 26 and I have quite a few gray hairs. I guess they started popping up about 3-4 years ago. Some are a silvery gray, and some are stark white. Most of them are located around the top of my hairline, but I do have quite a few hanging out at the top center of my head - right where the part ends.
Premature graying runs in my dad's side of the family. In fact, a lot of them had stark white hair by the time they were in their early 30s.

I am fine with them. Cant wait to have a beautiful gray/white head of hair when I am older. :)

[annah]

I don't think the color of your natural color makes a difference. My hair is very dark brown, and my greys are very close to white. I saw my first grey hair at 16/17, and have quite a few now at 31. I do have some interesting zebra striped hairs, alternating brown/silver down the length.

[amanda_the_tall]

i started getting silvers around 15. my dad has a mixture of white and silver... so, i really don't know about if it turns out the same

[swearnsue]

I had a few silvers in my early 20s and they disappeared a few years later. Then I started getting silvers about mid 40s that didn't go away but increased in numbers over the years.

[AnqeIicDemise]

Mine are silvery and thrilled about the prospect of being such when I'm older. Mom's hair's silvery too. Grandma's were silvery. Dad's hair? White. As snow and without sparklies... and somehow, he manages to make it look sexy.


ETA: Dad's hair was jet black in his youth, mom's a dark, reddish brown. Mine is a dark-reddish brown too. Now that I think about it S2 has silvery hair (jet black hair), S1 white (She's the redhead) and broho silvery (he's dark brown).

[meishkamooshka]

Rini That is so unbelievably cool! Your pictures, and the fact that your DH has a microscope attached to the comp!

:D

[CurlyCap]

My dad grayed prematurely and in my early 20s, I noticed a few white hairs popping up.

Now I'm almost 30 and I have about good sprinkling of WHITE hairs in the canopy. They frighten me because I wonder if I'll go stark white and never gray or silver. But I think I'm doomed to white. Both of my parents skipped gray completely.

[RitaPG]

I started going gray at 16 or 17. It was no big deal, just a couple teeny tiny gray hairs. But since my late teens I noticed they keep showing more and more.
Now at 24, I'm starting to think I have a crapload of them

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/picture.php?albumid=9134&pictureid=119703 (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/album.php?albumid=9134&pictureid=119703)

I took this picture about 6 months ago, it doesn't show all my grays but definitely shows a lot. Most of them are on the left side.
My mom only started going gray after her late 30s, and she finds it quite weird that I'm going gray at this age. I'm not sure how normal this is because many girls my age dye their hair. I'd love to figure out why this happens so early :(
If I could slow down or reverse graying without having to dye it, I would!

[MrsGuther]

I'm 23 and I find new white/gray hairs all the time!

[carolinaberry]

I think it's maybe pretty normal to start greying in your 20's, only it seems unusual to us because so many people color their hair.

ETA: My 7 year old has a strand of white hair in her fringe. I couldn't decide if it was sun-bleached blonde or silver, but she has md. brown hair so I can' t imagine one strand going blonde from the sun.

[MasCat]

My hair is dark brown, almost black and my grays are kind of blondish.

I noticed my first gray around 17-18 and that was when my mum first got hers. Roght now she dyes her hair, but when I see her hair in between she looks like she has about 30-40% grays at the wonderful age of 60.

I can't wait to have more noticable greys ;)

RitaPG I'd glady take yours :D

[MirrorOfErised]

I'm 28 and have been noticing a few. They seem to be growing around my temples and at the crown. They are usually very fine and short and I pull them out. My hair used to be extremely dark and now it's getting lighter and I'm finding grey/white hairs and I don't like it!:(

[MirrorOfErised]

I should have said - I don't think there is anything wrong with grey/white hair - just that my hair used to be so dark (almost black) and over the past few years it has been getting lighter, and this seems to be a continuation of it. It's almost blonde at the front, I guess from sun damage (although I'm not really out in the sun that much!)

[caadam]

I have dark brown hair and I have pure white hairs scattered all over the place. lol They sparkle a pretty silver in the light and sun.

Though the other day, I noticed a patch of white/silver hairs growing at my right temple above my ears! I was like, "That's interesting." lol I like my white/silver hairs. :D

[Angela_Rose]

I've had silvers since I was twelve. There are quite a few more now, of course, though I'm only twenty-eight.
At this point, most of those off-coloured hairs are still silver (especially those at my hairline/temples), but there are a few coming out of an old scar that are a super light blonde, and a handful in the canopy are white and a little coarse.

[lilliemer]

As others have mentioned it is really hard to judge what is a "normal" time to start going gray because so many people dye their hair. I had my first gray hair at 28, my friend spotted it and popped it right out of my scalp. ow. Now (age 33) i have a few dozen, they are mostly in my temples. I don't mind them too much, but the texture is different. I have coarse hair to begin with and the grays are even more wiry, they like to stick out of hairstyles and say hello. My hope is that with length this will settle down *crossing fingers*

edit: my "gray" or "white" hairs are colorless now, as they were when I first started getting them (so, no change). They look gray because I have very dark brown usually mistaken for black hair.

[Mesmerise]

As others have mentioned it is really hard to judge what is a "normal" time to start going gray because so many people dye their hair. I had my first gray hair at 28, my friend spotted it and popped it right out of my scalp. ow. Now (age 33) i have a few dozen, they are mostly in my temples. I don't mind them too much, but the texture is different. I have coarse hair to begin with and the grays are even more wiry, they like to stick out of hairstyles and say hello. My hope is that with length this will settle down *crossing fingers*


This is so true! If no one ever coloured their hair, I don't think anyone would think much of seeing 20-somethings with graying hair. As it is, so few younger women actually leave their hair natural when they gray, that it's impossible to really know what is "normal" and what is not!

I remember sitting at the pool a few months ago, and noticing the lady next to me, who had graying hair. It wasn't even graying much... she had quite a sprinkling, but it was still mostly brown (she'd have had less than me...). The interesting thing was that I hardly EVER see hair like that! I usually only see gray hair in people who have gone mostly gray, not people who are just in the process of graying a bit. Now this lady was probably older than me, so hardly "young" for gray hair. I guess it's very rare to see someone around here who just lets their hair go naturally gray... they usually dye, at least for a few years, before they decide to go natural.

When my roots start coming through I've been told "OMG you're going gray! You're too young for gray hair!!" Heck, I'm 39!!! I'm sort of self conscious because people DO comment when they notice, especially family members :rolleyes:.

I had my first few grays at about 21, and I guess in my late 20s I had quite a bit at the sides (I remember being happy that at least they were silvery in the sunlight), but I always dyed my hair. I now have no idea what % gray I am, as I never let it grow long enough to really tell, but it's quite obvious in my part when my hair starts to grow.

[l'inconnue]

Oh goodness--I was just about to write a post on early grey hair myself! Like many of you, I found my first "grey" (really stark-white) hair in my late teens. I dutifully plucked every one I found until a few months ago, and now they are coming in fast.

At first it was difficult to accept my fate as a mid-20s woman with--horror of horrors!--white streaks. But I should have known it was coming. At each Thanksgiving I spent with my mom's side of the family, every person over 30 had pure-white hair! So now when I spot the whites, I just think of my family. Really, the greys are just a harmless genetic quirk, nothing more. If I'm totally grey by 34 (like my mother), well, so be it.

Without the prevalence of readily-available hair dye, I'm sure there would be a LOT more people, of all ages, rocking the grey!

[Vanille_]

I actually like my white hairs. I used to pluck the ones on my part but that stopped as soon as I found out how awesome Manic Panic Vampire Red looks on them. Some people pay for hair tinsel, I get it for free! It's like free highlights. Now when they start growing, I don't jump to dye them either. I don't mind the contrast of white to brunette. I know it bothers some people, but I just like it. It's natural.

[Ookami]

Found my first grey hair (more a white silverish translucident) at 20. I'll be turning soon 28 and I got now this everywhere in my ash brown/blond mess .
I'm a light pepper and salt guy before my thirties :rolleyes:.
I'll probably be silver by 40 :D. Might look good with longhair :happydance:

[annah]

I'm really glad to see so many other people popping in! I was strongly considering dying my hair simply to hide the gray. I love my normal haircolor though, and I'd hate to never see it again before I'm totally grey.

[mamaherrera]

This thread is so amazing and comforting. I can't believe how many of us Youngeons, and I"m on the older side of all of you, have white hairs. I too, found my first at 28, and now at 32, (only been four years??) I have like 15. It's been killing me, and I'd like to try and reverse it. I guess I feel like that because like all of you say, I see NO ONE around my age with any white hairs. Not even with little roots, like mine when within a week, you can see the regrowth because they're right at the temples and ther'es just not enough hair to hide those little white roots. If more people would go natural, then I wouldn't feel the pressure. I think my stressing out about every white hair, produces more. I'm curious: of all you posting and not having it to blame on genetics (I don't think my family was AS premature grey as me) are you stressed out people/? I just wonder how much truth is in that we grey from stress. It's so hard NOT to stress. I stress just from people telling me not to stress. But I do henna, once a week now on the temple areas at least, just to feel confident. This has caused me to lose a lot of confidence, as I too, have the black hair and it looks so obvious. You are all impressive people and I thank you all for sharing. I'm saving this post to reread, every time I find a new one!!

[CurlyCurves]

I started going silver at 16. My hair now is what I would call a white/silver colour pretty much all over (except the old dyed blonde parts). My hair colour before I started going silver was blonde. I never really had the look of "steel grey", although my Mum did (she had naturally dark hair). I think the silver hairs are translucent, but next to other hairs with pigment they take on a bit of that colour. I have a microscope pic in my album showing this in my own hair:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/picture.php?albumid=847&pictureid=38116

WOW! That's amazing!

[MinderMutsig]

I started going silver at 16. My hair now is what I would call a white/silver colour pretty much all over (except the old dyed blonde parts). My hair colour before I started going silver was blonde. I never really had the look of "steel grey", although my Mum did (she had naturally dark hair). I think the silver hairs are translucent, but next to other hairs with pigment they take on a bit of that colour. I have a microscope pic in my album showing this in my own hair:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/picture.php?albumid=847&pictureid=38116 That is awesome cool. Now I want a microscope.

[Curly Crone]

I think if you are getting white hair now as opposed to silver or gray then that is what you will have. I started to get white hair when I was very young, my Mom used to pluck them out of my head too. My whites did not get wiry or coarse, they got finer and softer.

I didn’t get a ton of them until after the birth of my son at 33. Then they really started coming in fast but most of mine were in two distinct stripes at my temples. When I was 36 a child asked if I was my son’s “Grandma” and that really hurt, I know the kid didn’t know any better but my self esteem took a real hit but I still resisted the dye bottle.

When I turned 40 I quit smoking and then I gained a whole ton of weight. I really felt bad then so decided I didn’t want to be fat and gray so I started dyeing my hair. I REGRET that decision completely, my hair grows pretty fast so I looked like I needed a new dye job in as little as 3 weeks, I had a LOT of white hair especially around my face. I wish that I’d had the self confidence back then to just be myself.

Keeping up with the dye jobs was just too time consuming and expensive. I quit the salon dye jobs because of the money and dyed my hair myself. A few years later I finally decided to quit, it was such a hassle and every time I dyed my hair my scalp was irritated and I would splash that black dye all over my bathroom no matter how hard I tried to be neat, to this day there is still black dye staining my cabinets and floor.

By this time my hair was down to my waist, I had so much white hair and my natural color was black so just quitting was not an option, I had to do the “big chop”. I went from waist to pixie and I hated being that short. As soon as the dye was gone I started growing my hair again. I just wonder how long my hair would be if I had never started dyeing.

My white hair is hereditary, my Mom also went white the same way I did. My grandmother skipped the white hair but it did come from my Great Grandfather so it can skip generations and you may not know it’s hereditary. Neither of my kids inherited it but who knows about my Granddaughter it will take some time before we know if she won the gene lottery.

I do have to say though that I never ever got a hair compliment when my hair was black but I get a few occasionally now that I am natural. There are a lot of people that admire those white-silver sparklers and right now there are a lot of young people embracing their silvers and I think it’s nice. I did not get silver though, mine are just white so they don’t sparkle but I am looking forward to the day when they are all white.

Rini, the close-up of your hair is fantastic…it looks like silver jewelry!

:D Here is a pic of my black and white hair:

http://i.imgur.com/HzkKz.jpg

[holothuroidea]

I think it is very difficult to tell the actual color of only one hair. There are so many subtleties of hue that you won't be able to see until you have a hundred or so of them together.

DH has silvers and they are white, but not translucent.

I don't have any silvers yet. :( My mom only has like two so I have no idea what color of "gray" I stand to inherit, but I remember my grandmother had a steely-gray color in her 60's before she went white in her late 70's.

[mediumhair]

Is it ok to cut or pull out grey hair? I'm in my 20's and already pull out a few strands a year. They are so noticeable.

[MinderMutsig]

Is it ok to cut or pull out grey hair? I'm in my 20's and already pull out a few strands a year. They are so noticeable. My guess is it could damage the follicle permanently so it may not be the best idea.

[Charybdis]

To return to one of the comments upthread, it is definitely possible to have gray hair that is actually gray in color. My mother had black hair as a younger woman, and when she started getting noticeable amounts of white hair, she also started having hair come in that wasn't white, but wasn't black either -- it was more of that steel gray color, and it wasn't particularly flattering for her skin tone. Over time, more and more of her steel grays have turned silver white, which (IMO) looks better on her.

I think my father's black hair did kind of the same thing, but he's been bald since his 20s and only has a buzz-cut horseshoe of hair that you can judge by. :p The steel grays work better on him, since he's quite a bit darker-skinned than my mother.

My hair is a slightly warm-toned dark brown, and my "grays" come in either colorless and translucent or silver-white and sparkly. I get the impression that the colorless ones, which look kind of blondish, tend to turn into the silver-white sparklies over time. The no-color translucent hairs seem to be more of a transitional phase for my hair follicles. My baby sis doesn't have any grays yet that I know of, so we'll have to wait and see for her! She's got the warm-toned dark brown as well, a little lighter than me.

[FrannyG]

I saw my first silvers when I was 23. The whole front of my head and about 70% of the back is now naturally silver.

I really dislike the word "grey" to describe white/silver hairs. They only look grey if they're beside darkish hair. By definition, they lack any pigment, so they should be white or translucent, depending on one's hair type. Of course certain minerals in the shower and other factors such as some hair products and ACV can add a slight hue to white hair.