5 Small Gray Hair Mistakes that Make You Older
In today’s post, we’ll be discussing the subtle gray hair mistakes that you need to fix ASAP.
Most people go gray to avoid the maintenance headaches associated with artificial hair colors. While this is a fair reason to keep your natural hair color, it doesn’t excuse you from hair care completely; you still have to care for your hair to a certain extent.
However, it also doesn’t demand the kind of meticulous, backbreaking care that you’re signing up for when you apply the first drop of bleach to your hair. So, finding that balance between moderate and meticulous hair care for your grey hair can be challenging, especially for beginners.
To help you out, I’ll list six missable grey hair mistakes that make you look older. In addition to that, I’ll also show you some hair care tips for grey hair to keep you at your prettiest every single time.
Gray Hair Mistakes that Make You Look Older
Going gray doesn’t absolve you of hair care mistakes. While you may be relieved of certain hair care tasks, you’re still open to many mistakes, many of which will make you look significantly older if you keep on making them.
If you don’t fancy looking like a 70-year-old in your thirties, here are some of the gray hair mistakes you should avoid at all costs to look younger than your actual age:
1. You’re not using hair oils
While you may have been refraining from using hair oils frequently, that isn’t a practice that’s very rewarding with gray hair. One of the effects that come with hair graying is a reduction in the overall hair oils, requiring artificial oiling to make your hair retain that characteristic silky and oily look you love
While you may already know some of the benefits of hair oils or even used them before you went gray, you certainly weren’t using them to their full potential. Replacing the lost oils in your hair, maintaining the bouncy look of your hair, and eliminating frizz sound like some benefits you want when you eventually start going grey.
As long as you don’t have allergies, you can use almost any kind of oil on your gray hair. Once you decide to start going grey, you should also hit a store to stock up on some hair oils; you’ll need them.
2. You’re too rough with your hair
Generally, people tend to care less about their hair as they age, and that’s logical; it’s not like you’re wooing your first girlfriend at 70. At the same time, most people want their hair to always look its best, regardless of what age they are.
Studies have shown that your hair doesn’t suddenly grow immunity as you age. Instead, it gets progressively weaker, requiring even more care than you earlier accorded to it. This makes it imperative to review how you care about your hair to ensure you’re not mistreating it.
You can start by switching back to a silky pillow if you don’t already use one. While you might have switched to a cotton pillow at some point when you decided to go gray, it’s important to note that cotton is even more damaging to gray hair than it is to other kinds of hair.
Also, you should try to refrain from tying your hair into a tight ponytail, as it puts too much pressure on your weakening hair roots. You may also want to avoid excessive use of hot hair tools that cause gradual damage to your hair over the years.
3. You’re overusing purple shampoo
Once you decide to go gray, you’ll almost certainly switch to a purple toner, as purple shampoo is the best for grey hair. At the same time, excessive use of purple shampoo will only make your hair look worse in the long run.
Purple shampoo is famous for canceling out unnatural and yellowish locks from your hair, giving it a more uniform look throughout. Due to this unique ability, most people wearing gray hair tend to stick to purple shampoo in the long run to give their hair an everlasting natural look.
In the desperate quest for a natural look, excessive purple shampoo will make your hair look even more unnatural by giving it a purple-like tint. If you use purple shampoo every day, you may want to consider mixing in a milder alternative to avoid making the hair look unnatural.
4. Skipping prep before swimming
If you’re going swimming, you may want to prepare your hair for the exercise before diving in. There are many chemicals in the water that you don’t want to expose to your hair. From the chlorine in most pools to the sodium chloride at the beach, preparing your hair for a swim is not an optional prerequisite.
The best way to prevent chlorine from damaging your gray tresses is by applying conditioner before exposing it to the water. Alternatively, you can use a swim cap to achieve the same effect, but with less reliability (water can seep through and your swim cap can come off).
If you’ve already swam without preparing your hair, you may want to treat your hair with an anti-discoloration treatment, available cheaply at most stores.
5. Not filtering your bathwater
For almost the same set of reasons why you should prepare your hair before a swim, you should also consider filtering your bathwater when caring for your hair. Since it sounds counterintuitive to “prep” your hair for a bath, this is about the only option.
Most of the time, the water from your shower is hard water with a truckload of chemicals that react negatively with your grey hair. Since these chemicals are what you’re avoiding in the pool, washing your hair with shower water is akin to swimming in a pool.
Fortunately, the fix for this is simple. You can start by replacing your showerhead with an alternative that automatically filters the water. These showerheads will ensure that your bathwater is safe for your gray hair.
6. You’re drying your hair with a regular towel
While this could’ve easily gone under the “rough-handling” section, it deals enough damage to deserve a section to itself. To be clear, a regular cotton towel does plenty of damage to regular hair, but it even becomes more aggressive when you decide to go gray.
Once you decide to keep your gray hair, you should also discard your cotton towels. If you must dry your hair using a towel, only consider using a microfiber towel, as it’s gentler on the hair. Even with a microfiber towel, drying too aggressively could be hazardous.
If you have curly or wavy hair, you can dry your hair using the plopping technique. However technique you end up using, just ensure you’re using a microfiber cloth and you’re being gentle on the hair.
7. You’re using alcohol-based hair products
Alcohol and grey hair don’t play along very nicely, so you probably want to discard your existing hair products with alcohol in them. They’re not that hard to spot; they typically have that distinct hand sanitizer smell that sets them apart from the rest.
If you’re not sure, check the ingredients for any mention of alcohol, ethanol, propanol, or myristyl before buying any hair care products.
How to Enhance Gray Hair Naturally
Unless you’re a hair care expert, your gray tresses will always look like they’re missing something. Of course, there are many artificial solutions to enhance dull-looking gray hair, but isn’t going natural one of the main points of going gray?
If you want your grey hair to look its best without using artificial treatments, you can start by changing your hair products. There are specific shampoos designed to serve individuals willing to enhance their gray hair naturally.
Keeping your hair hydrated will also help in enhancing it. If you haven’t added a hydrating masque to your hair care kit yet, you should probably consider that to get enhanced natural tresses.
If you have curly gray hair, you’ll do your locs a lot of good by avoiding hair-drying procedures other than plopping. While it may sound somewhat complicated, it’s simply the process of tying up your hair with a microfiber cloth. Trying to dry your hair in another way will weaken the roots, weakening your hair in the long run
Lastly, you should attempt to avoid all or at least most of the mistakes I’ve outlined above. Following them may enhance your hair naturally but avoiding them will certainly ruin your tresses and make you look ages older.
How to Wear Gray Hair Without Looking Old
A longstanding myth has linked having gray hair to looking old, and our brains seem to have been hardwired to believe that. However, when you style your gray hair correctly, you may look young and beautiful while retaining the hair color.
The most important step to wearing gray hair without looking in your seventies is the willingness to put in the effort to make your hair look good. Most people don’t seem to understand that gray hair isn’t what’s linked to old age, the wiriness and frizz associated with gray hair is.
However, it’s very difficult to keep gray hair without frizz or wiriness, but not impossible. To make it work, you must take proactive measures to make your hair look great. In addition to that, you must also be willing to avoid all the gray hair mistakes that make you look older.
Once you have all those nailed out, you can wear your gray hair proudly without getting the stereotypical “oldie” look due to your hair color.
Conclusion
Deciding to go gray is normal, but leaving your hair to become wiry and dingy after going gray isn’t. If you’d love to look younger than your age, there are specific hair care practices that you may be doing in error.
In this article, I’ve outlined six of the most popular gray hair mistakes that will only make you look older. If you’re patient, you can also learn how to enhance your gray hair naturally, all in this article.
Before you go, here are some other posts you might find helpful as well.
- 5 Good Hair Care Habits You Need to Adopt
- Here’s one of the Best Natural Hair Dyes for Grey Hair
- Can Gray Hair Turn Black Again Naturally?
- 5 Common Hair Mistakes to Avoid When You’re Over 50
- 5 Hair Care Mistakes That’ll Ruin Your Thin Hair
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