Do individual hairs actually have the color gray, or is gray just the appearance of a mixture of white with darker hair?
Asked by
Jeruba (
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June 5th, 2011
In my own hair it seems like it’s a mix. I don’t see hairs that all by themselves appear to have a gray color. But I’m not in the best position to judge, and it’s really hard to look at a single hair and see its color.
It’s my impression that people with naturally blond hair—light Scandinavian blond, for instance—don’t appear to turn gray the way others do. Instead their hair seems to acquire a silvery quality before eventually turning white. I haven’t been able to observe any one such person up close over time. An old friend whom I hadn’t seen in a long time still looks blonde after 40 years, and she said, “We Swedes don’t turn gray.” Is this so? If true, it suggests that the white-only theory is correct.
My impression of plenty of others from a reasonable social distance is that the hair is actually gray, but when I look as closely as I can, I only see a mix of white and dark.
I imagine a hairdresser would know for sure.
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11 Answers
I have undertaken an extensive survey of the two people in this room at the moment. We have white hairs and brown hairs. No grey.
Grey or white hair is not actually a true grey or white pigment. In fact, it is clear due to lack of pigmentation and melanin. The clear hairs appear as grey or white because of the way light reflects from the hairs. link
This would explain why Mom’s hair looks gray…it is mixed with her originally brown/black hair. It also explains why a few colorless hairs now sprouting on my upper lip look really white when nestled in with the blond.
My hair looks white. It has never looked gray.
When it was a mixture of brown, red and white it just looked “lighter” brown and streaky.
I have never seen a gray hair.
I have no grey hairs, just a mix of brown ones and white ones.
Gray is a color.
Grey is a colour.
My grey hair is actually white. Most of my beard has turned grey.
None of my hair is or will ever be gray!
Both “gray” and “grey” are accepted spellings in the U.S., and I put both in my tags.
Mine are clear, I think, and just seem to wash out my red to some mousy, non-distinct color. <sob>
What I want to do is turn my hair white all at once, now that parts of it are white, and skip the faded gray mix. I wonder if that’s going to be possible.
Maybe you could bleach it all? That’s a pretty harsh process, though. I’m sure a hairdresser would know. Meantime, here’s some info about one way to do it.
My hair does lighten before it gets to that clear (lack of) colour. But since no one really has truly black hair, it never gets grey. It’s more like a light brown squirrel colour.
But that’s different than white hairs mixed in with black (or whatever colour hair you have). I think that’s often termed salt and pepper ?
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