5 Small Gray Hair Mistakes that Make You Older

Esther GodswillJuly 9, 2022

In today’s post, we’ll be discussing the tiny gray hair mistakes that you need to fix ASAP.

Most people go gray to avoid the maintenance headaches associated with other hair types. While this is correct to a certain extent, keeping gray hair doesn’t excuse you from caring for your hair.

However, going gray also demands that you don’t use every hair care strategy that you use on your regular hair. If you make too many mistakes with gray hair, you’ll only give you the much-hated old look nobody wants.

If you feel your gray hair is making you look a lot older than you are, you’re probably making one of these mistakes. Here is a list of some of the mistakes you’re most probably making with gray hair and how to fix them.

gray hair mistakes that makes you look older

Table of Contents

Gray Hair Mistakes that Makes You Look Older

Going gray doesn’t mean you can’t make hair care mistakes. While you may be relieved of certain hair care tasks, you can still make many mistakes with the few ones that you still do with your gray hair.

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 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 reduction in the overall hair oils, requiring artificial oiling to make your hair look silky and less wiry.

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 potentials. Replacing the lost oils in your hair, maintaining the bouncy look of your hair, and eliminating frizz sounds like some benefits you want on gray hair.

As long as you don’t have allergies, you can use almost any kind of oil on your gray hair. When you decide to go gray, you should understand that you’ll have to be applying some oils on your hair every so often.

2. You’re too rough with your hair

Generally, people tend to care less about their hair as they age, and that’s logical. At the same time, most people want their hair to always look its best, regardless of what age they are.

However, studies have shown that your hair doesn’t suddenly grow immunity as you age. Instead, it gets progressively weaker, requiring even more care than it was accorded earlier. This makes it imperative to review how you care about your hair to ensure you’re not mistreating it.

You can start from changing your pillow back to a silky 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. Also, the fact that purple shampoo is the best toner for gray hair. At the same time, excessive use of purple shampoo will only make your hair look worse on the long run.

Purple shampoo is famous for canceling out unnatural and yellowish locks from your hair. Due to this unique ability, most people wearing gray hair tend to stick to purple shampoo on the long run to give their hair an everlasting natural look.

In the quest for a natural look, excessive purple shampoo will actually make your hair look even more unnatural by giving it a purple-like tint. If you use purple shampoo everyday, 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 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 imperative.

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.

If you’ve already swam without preparing your hair, you may want to treat your hair with 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 that comes out of your shower is hard water with a truckload of other chemicals. Since these chemicals are what you’re avoiding in the pool, washing your hair with this 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 your 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 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, you should 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. It doesn’t matter what technique you end up using, as long as it’s a microfiber towel and you’re not treating your hair roughly.

How to Enhance Gray Hair Naturally

Unless you’re a hair care expert, your gray tresses will always look like they’re missing something. While there are many artificial solutions to enhance dull-looking gray hair, one of the main points of going gray is to go natural.

If you want your grey hair to look its best without having to use 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 be doing it a lot of good by avoiding hair drying procedures other than hair 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 on 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 gray hair to age, and our brains seemed 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 keep gray hair without frizz or wiriness. To ensure that, 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.

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gray hair mistakes to avoid