How old were you when your hair started going gray?
Please note if you are male or female.
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Male, it was my late 20s or early 30s.
Started in my early 40’s, but maybe 5 strands. By late 40’s maybe 20 strands. I’m 50 now, and I still appear as a brunette at a reasonable distance, but get closer and you’ll see the grey. My guess is I won’t be completely grey for a long time if I ever get there. My mom still isn’t completely grey, and my dad is now, they both are in their mid 70’s. My dad got a lot more grey suddenly when he had bypass surgery at age 46, but it leveled off until he was in his 60’s when he finally went completely grey.
My husband is 51 and still has beautiful black wavy hair, except for a very little bit of greying in his sideburns, and a little on his chest. His dad and sister started to grey in their 20’s.
I think it’s mostly genetics, especially early grey that starts in your 20’s.
Pretty much the same as JLeslie, for me.
I still think myself to be mostly blond (the picture of me on my icon was taken in 2016), but some pictures I’ve noticed that my hair is actually mostly grey or white. I was fully blond in 2012 though had some strands and tufts of grey
Make. Late 30s. Ten years later, I still have all my hair — so I’m not complaining.
I have some little wings of grey, but no much. I am a 66-year-old female. My mother was not completely gray when she died at 89 so gray is not my issue. (Evil grin) My two sisters are both completely gray and they are six years and eight years younger than I am.
40 years-old and not a single grey hair yet.
I’m male, I’m 27, and I have two noticeable gray hairs. I’m wasting away…! :(
I saw my first gray hair around 28 & going through a LOT of stress. I got rid of the stress & the gray disappeared. Then the little buggers showed up again around 35–36 while stressed & again, once I got rid of the stress, POOF they were gone. They came & went all through my 40s. Then during my 50s they showed up again but didn’t leave!!!
Actually, IF I had to have gray hair, it was a pretty shade of gray (actually more silver) & I had more of a salt & pepper mix that got me a lot of compliments. Then my hair began to fall out & was getting fairly thin. I preferred gray hair to NO hair so I did my research. About the same time I had become interested in Essential Oils & in my learning about them, I kept reading that Spanish Rosermary EO would help stop the loss of hair. Mine had gotten so thin that I was considering one of those hair loss restoration places but the cost was prohibitive.Instead, I bought a $6.00 bottle of the Rosemary EO & began adding a couple drops to my shampoo every time I did my hair. My hair STOPPED falling out & as a side benefit, my gray begin to darken too!!! Now, when you’re standing next to me in the sunlight you can see what would have been gray before but it is more of a light brown now where my hair is still a dark brown. IF you didn’t know tha t I had gray darkening, you might not even notice the difference.
I have also read that if you’ll take a ¼ cup of Organic Coconut Oil & add 3 teaspoons Fresh Lemon Juice, mix them together. rub them into the scalp, leave on for 1 hour, rinse well & then shampoo thoroughly. Do it once a week until you’ve reached your desired results. This is supposed to return your gray to your natural hair color no matter whether you’re brown, black, red,or blonde. Since my Rosemary is doing about the same thing, & I don’t regularly have an hour to give, I’ve not tried this natural remedy. However,IF I hadn’t tried the Rosemary, I’d be all over trying this one thinking that I had nothing to lose!!! Just saying.
40 for me.
But life isn’t fair. I know a guy who is 67 years old with a full head of hair with just a very tiny bit of grey hair. His face is young looking with hardly any rinkles. When I was told his age I said, “No way! That guy is no older than 40!”
Female, by age 32. All my family are silver fox’s though, we like it.
I had two gray hairs in my beard. I plucked them out and they never came back grey. I was 38.
22, narrow white streak right in front, just off center. It widened over the years, and later on people began to think I’d had it put in deliberately, as a style thing. Nope.
My grandmother’s hair went all white in her twenties. The effect of that was that for the next decades, she looked ageless. I guess I just got a few inches’ worth of that gene.
@Jeruba – Your streak sounds like mine! I recently read about a “Mallen Streak” and this kind of sounds like that.
To answer my own question: I have had a gray/white streak since I can remember, but lately, at 42, I have started to notice additional grays popping up elsewhere.
Mid fifties. My mustache went first, and my hair has definite grey tendencies. But it is still mostly brown. I am a 63 yr old male.
I think in my early to mid-50s.
Male, 25. But now, more than 30 years later, while it is all gray, it is all there.
@answerjill, I had no idea it had a name. Just now I looked it up with Google, but most of the images look phoney, bleached. Mine came in pure white, and of course no “roots” ever showed because it was natural and didn’t grow out. By now I suppose it would blend in with the gray, but I color the rest of my hair—not my white streak.
I had a few grey hairs in my 50’s which seemed to fall out. I wasn’t really noticeably grey until I reached 60. (male).
Male, late 30’s, just a few though.
@Jeruba narrow white streak right in front, just off center. It widened over the years, and later on people began to think I’d had it put in deliberately, as a style thing. Nope.
I knew you were literary, I did not know you are Susan Sontag!
^^I know very little about literature, but I’m pretty sure Sontag passed away. I think of her as being a Jewish New Yorker, but that might be because of me stereotyping in my head, and possibly that’s totally wrong.
^^Sontag passed away in 2004 just 2 weeks before her 72nd birthday. She was born & subsequently died in NYC. She was buried in France. Her parents were both Jews of Lithuanian and Polish descent.
Early forties, male,mostly all grey now but thank my lucky it’s still all there.
Mid fifties now.
Apparently, in my mid-forties. Upon visiting a hair salon, the stylist proclaimed, “Wow, you’ve got grey hair!” Thanks.~ This was news to me.
Since then, I’ve embraced it. It is considered natural highlights to the normally drab brown coloured hair
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Female 58 ~ I don’t want to tempt fate but I still have no grey hair.
late 50’s. ( female)
Grey hair is grey due to diet changes not age as most think.
I knew a female friend at age 14 who developed grey hair! Her diet changed and also the fact that she had predominantly black hair which showed up the grey more so.
All hair is made up of different colors the predominant one is the color we all identify the person with.
@Inspired_2write Really? That is the first time I’ve heard that. Do you have a link to back that up?
@Pied_Pfeffer I never did either and I’m sure my diet didn’t change as I grew older.
Late thirties I saw my first. I have dark black hair so they are impossible to miss. I’m 41 now and my side burns are 20% grey with sparse grey everywhere else that is not very noticeable. My beard has quite a bit though. I have lived a rough and tumble life thus far so a little grey is something I have earned.
Got my first at 18, with a small patch of strands in the back that continued to grow no matter how many times I pulled them out. Now I’m 27 and leave the patch alone but am getting a few more noticeable strands on the top of my head.
I’ve always had a few strands of silver hairs growing in the same two spots on either side of my head. Slightly above and behind the top of my ears.
Strangely enough, I’ve also always had these unusually thick hairs growing from the same two spots as well. Sometimes 4–5x the diameter of a regular strand of hair. They would grow out thick and curly. The rest of my hair is naturally straight.
I’ve often wondered if the white hairs resulted from these super strands sucking up extra nutrients.
Female, 40’s.
I’ve had these since I was a teenager.
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