When do you use "grey" versus "gray"?

Always grey, because that is the correct way to spell that word.

It depends on where you’re from @AdventureElephants. I’m British/Australian so I use grey. If I was from the US, I’d use gray.

I always spell it “grey” because that’s the correct way.

Both spellings are correct in both British and American English. It comes from the old English græg.
As others have mentioned gray is favoured in the US and grey favoured pretty much everywhere else but there’s always some people (around 20%) using the opposite spelling to what everyone else is. Amusingly, usually when the US simplified æ they went with e but in this case they favoured a.

I prefer grey but my autocorrect is more American than I am, and often changes it to gray or Grey.

As a young lad
I was taught to use “gray”
but along the way
I switched it to “grey”

But this I must say
If a choice is in play
I’d rather use “gray”
‘Cause that was my first way

My English husband’s nickname was Gray (for Graham) but some of my American relatives always spelled it “Grey.” Go figure.

Both are correct.

I use “grey.” This is an irrational response on my part to an annoying boy with whom I went to school. His last name was Gray. He was obnoxious enough that I switched to grey.

I use both. I use gray to describe a color of object like gray crayon or gray floor coating. I will use grey when there is opportunity to invoke an emotion like the sky is turning really grey.

I am similar to @Cruiser. I live near San Francisco, “the cool gray city of love”, but fog is always grey to me. A mouse or an elephant is gray.

Shades of græg.

I use both fairly interchangeably. I think I usually use grey. Both are correct in American English.

They are both correct, as others have said.

My personal choice is ‘gray’. Using the ‘e’ (grey) seems snobbish – it smacks of elitism. Like you would tell the butler “bring me the Grey cravat, Jeeves”. I would say “get me the gray tie”.

But that’s just me.

In the dictionary, they are interchangeable, but the spelling “gray” is used throughout the definition. So “gray” is a color, and I spell it that way. “Earl Grey” is a tea and a person’s name, so I spell it that way.

I personally think that “gray” is the cleaner spelling, aye?

It’s grey with me only because that’s how I’ve always spelled it. I think it’s printed that way on the wrapper around the crayola crayon.

Some people say Grey is a last name, but I’ll just point out I have a friend with the last name Gray. @tedibear said the same about a person with the surname Gray.

I use grey. I feel it looks nicer and sounds better in my head. Gray looks like an entirely different shade in my head than grey.

In my old The New Century Dictionary, from 1944, it lists “grey…See gray, etc.” and under “gray, grey” (note which is listed first), “gray” is always used in the definition to define the color and “grey” is always used to describe a color in/from quoted literary text.
To each his or her own, I suppose, but I think “gray” more correct. (SO moot!)
@stanleybmanly You will check on the Crayola spelling, won’t you? I think it “gray.”

From the Crayola listing in wikipedia:

As “Middle Grey”, part of the Munsell line, 1926–1944. Spelled “Grey” on labels, but “Gray” on boxes. Also called “Neutral Grey”, 1930–1956.[2]

I use “gray” unless I am submitting a paper to a journal that requires me to conform to British conventions.

@Lightlyseared “It comes from the old English græg… usually when the US simplified æ they went with e but in this case they favoured a.”

And if we go further back, the Indo-European word was “grēwaz.” At first blush, this would seem to favor the “e.” But interestingly, the Proto-Germanic word was grawja (which favors the “a”). In fact, British English was one of the only languages that ended up with the “e” over the “a.” And if you look at cognates in other languages, almost all of them went with the “a” (Dutch: grauw; German: grau; Old Norse:grár). Even Old Saxon favored the “a” and went with grāo. The only linguistic ancestor of English that favored the “e” is Old Frisian, which had the word grē. So in this case, favoring the “e” makes British English the outlier (not that this means it is any less correct—just different).

@kritiper “In my old The New Century Dictionary, from 1944, it lists “grey…See gray, etc.” and under “gray, grey” (note which is listed first)”

That’s because the New Century Dictionary favors alphabetical order. If there are two acceptable versions of a word, it lists both under whichever comes first alphabetically. Contrast this with other dictionaries, such as the New Oxford American Dictionary, which favors British spellings (so “gray” directs you to “grey”) or the American Heritage Dictionary, which favors US spellings (so “grey” directs you to “gray”). It’s all a matter of which organizing principles a particular compiler chooses to adopt.

Thanks to @zenvelo for the research on the crayons. Come to think of it, the crayon may well be what determined my leaning to grEy. I wonder how many others are sent down that road by simply being furnished a box of crayons before they can read.

Either/or as specified by culture.

I use grey when I want to feign Britishness. Which is to say, not bloody often. Oops.

I used to use “grey” because that’s what looked right to me. I guess that reflected my predominant reading. Also the word looks greyer than with an a.

When I learned that it was yet another British-versus-American spelling difference, I sighed and capitulated because I didn’t want to be seen as affecting a culture that (alas) isn’t mine. Also, in my profession I have to enforce standard American spelling for publication by American publishers. So…I write “gray.”

My 96-color Crayola box contains a crayon labeled “gray.” This box is only about 15 years old. I wonder if they changed it somewhere along the way.

My current box of crayons (96) has “gray” and “timberwolf” of all things.

I prefer “grey.”

Grey is the correct word? I’ve always seen and used gray. I thought grey was UK. I’ve never seen grey on a crayon.

Why are crayons the authority?

Look up grey hair dyes and plenty spell it grey, and others gray. I don’t remember which was favored when I was in school, if one was favored. It wasn’t like color and colour, or judgment and judgement.

I introduced the crayons to the thread, because I was trying to recall where I picked up my preference for the spelling, and most of us probably have crayons in our hands before we can read. And I bet whatever is printed on the sides of those crayons (when I was a kid we called them “colors”) has a very strong influence on a kid honing reading skills. I’d bet if you could gather a bunch of 5 year olds in a room and administer a spelling test, there would be few 3 syllable words you could list that could compare with “crayola” for rates of accuracy. In fact, my cynical mind wonders why marketers of children’s goods aren’t busy flooding the nurseries with crayons plastered with logos. Now there’s an idea! Twenty years from now demographers can puzzle over the sudden unexplainable spike in the preference in everything from car colors to cosmetics and house paint for “bmanly blue”.

@stanleybmanly All good points and ideas.

@AshlynM “Grey” is UK, and “gray” is US. The jellies asserting that “grey” is correct at the beginning of the question are purposely overstating their case due to their personal preferences.

I’m ‘Mukin and I prefer “grey.” However, my earliest memories are reading “Pooh,” by AA Milne, and “Just So Stories” by Kipling. I still want to throw the letter “u” in some places, like, “colour.”

Both “grey” spellings are correct, though.