While I feel that my choice to live with my natural gray hair was a good decision for me it may not be the option for everyone, my personal opinion is that everyone should live in a manner that makes them happy and best represents who they are. Drawing from my own personal experience below are some things to consider if you are thinking of making the transition to living gray.
My Pros
1) Freedom
In this case, freedom represents being released from the restriction of hair coloring appointments. With hair coloring, you are required to wait a certain amount of time between coloring treatments and, I felt as if I was being held hostage to this timeline because my gray roots would be visible just 1 week after coloring this resulted in me using coloring sticks at least for another 1-2 weeks so that I could wear the styles that I wanted to. Coming up on the 3rd week the grays were too noticeable to be covered with the coloring stick so at this point I would retreat into a wig until that 6-8 week threshold of when I could do my coloring treatment again. This was the cycle over and over, it never changed for years, transitioning to gray removed me from the confines of that cycle, and the freedom from that is priceless which is why it is my # 1 pro.
2) Money saved
Ending the coloring cycle means you save all the extra costs related to those coloring treatments. For me the savings extended to no longer having to purchase coloring sticks as well as the cost of wigs, because I had to wear wigs so frequently I wanted to have a variety of styles, and achieving this variety came at a high cost.
3) Flexibility with hairstyles
Not having to be concerned with my gray roots opened up so many more options for hairstyles that I previously stayed away from such as braiding styles. Doing Single Braids or even Cornrows meant that my gray roots would show throughout and would be the primary focus no matter how great the style was. After transitioning to gray I now wear all my braided styles with confidence and have the flexibility to do many more hairstyles without freaking out that my hair would be parted exposing all the roots.
4) Feeling contentment from being true to myself
I guess the best way to describe this is I finally feel like I've stopped hiding the real me, it's almost as if I was living as a fraud and now the true me has emerged. All that time I spent hiding under wigs and color treatments, frantically using color sticks, hats, and anything else I could find all in an effort to ensure that my secret wouldn't be exposed. Since transitioning I am no longer living that lie, I don't have to feel embarrassed or overwhelmed with anxiety if I go to take a medical test or do something that requires me to remove my headdress, or when I start a new relationship and not wanting to reveal that part of me so I would double down on my efforts to ensure my partner didn't see under the wig or head tie whatever the disguise was at the given moment. It was truly exhausting. The feeling of contentment now knowing that what you see is what you get gives me such comfort.
5) Compliments
Let's talk about the compliments that I get every day just completely out of the blue. I have watched people cross a crowded room just to tell me they love my hair and the compliments come from both men and women alike. I also laugh when I see people do a double take when they look at me, maybe curious about my age but then stop to say how they wish their own grays would grow in the way mine does. The best is the people who mistakenly think I colored my hair gray and are surprised when I tell them no it's my natural color. This is definitely the fun part of living gray it is a conversation starter for sure.
My Cons
1) Gray hair stigma
I found that because of the stigma attached to gray hair, there were some people who lacked respect for my choice asking why would I do such a thing in my 40ies. While letting me know that there is no way they could ever stop coloring and covering their grays. The preconceived notion that "Gray is Old" I feel has resulted in societal barriers for those of us who are not 75 years old with gray hair, as it places you into one category "the senior category". This impacted me as I searched for employment after I was laid off at 48, I could almost see it in the interviewer's face thinking "Why is this old woman applying for this job", more on that in another post.
2) Lack of products geared specifically to gray hair care
My experience has been that taking care of gray hair is not the same as other colored hair, I find that my gray hair is brittle and dry, and I have been told this by others as well with gray hair. Gray hair also develops a stubborn yellowing and requires a specific type of shampoo to combat the ugly brassy stained look similar to Blond hair. The problem I find is that these shampoos do not always remove that yellow stain and even going to my hairdresser I still end up leaving with some level of yellowing remaining in my hair. In my search for products to care for and treat my gray hair, I found that there were more products advertised to slow or reverse gray hair which of course will not work but, it makes sense that this would be prevalent since it goes back to the gray hair stigma that I mentioned for my first Con.
3) Finding matching hair pieces and extensions
I have always enjoyed changing up and refreshing my look by changing my hairstyle, to accomplish this I would sometimes use hair pieces and extensions, the problem is finding gray hair pieces has been difficult. In my younger days, my hairstyle would change every 2 weeks which was a must for me and was my own personal enjoyment to express myself in different refreshed looks often. Transitioning to gray hair has made it difficult to achieve these different looks and styles. I find there is a lack of color tones in the gray hair category not to mention just a lack of gray in hair extensions overall. There are different gray color mixes such as gray/silver, gray/brown, and gray/black but these can be found few and far between. I find that for gray braiding hair there are more options available, but outside of that for ponytail extensions, weaving hair, and clip-in extensions the options are limited.
There you have it, these are the pros and cons of transitioning to gray hair for me but definitely, there is more to mention in each of the categories but these are the main areas that represent my overall feelings since going through my transition and now living gray for almost 4 years. For me, the pros considerably outweigh the cons and I do not regret my decision for a minute.
If you are trying to decide if you should take the plunge to live gray, I would suggest that you take a moment to decide what areas of your life would be impacted in a positive way and focus mainly on how that will make you feel and how much it means to you, after that really the cons won't even matter whatever they are.