George Clooney Look for Grey Hair

George Clooney hair — George Clooney - Photo by PR Photos

Q: My hair is now mainly white. I would like it to be a mixture of gray and black. A bit like George Clooney. Can you suggest a solution?

A: When it comes to “going gray” people get very specific about what they want. Unfortunately, what they want is not often what they get. We are all at the mercy of our genes when we go gray. Some of us will get gray hairs localized in a specific area. Some will get a diffuse smattering of gray evenly throughout the hair, and still others seem to gradually just fade to white.

You do have an advantage over some other gray “types” in that what you want is to add some color to some of the currently unpigmented hair that you have. This is theoretically possible. The problem lies in the fact that in order to get a realistic look, the unpigmented hair needs to be evenly distributed among the colored strands.

You could probably do this with a foil color application, but it will take a LOT of foils, a lot of time and patience, and a stylist who is willing to invest that kind of time into the service.

That leads to the question of cost, since this will take much longer than a normal foil color service, and your stylist may decide to charge by the hour. (He or she will almost certainly charge more than his or her normal color service fee.)

My advice is to talk to your hairdresser. Explain what you want done and see what he or she comes back with as far as cost and estimated time to perform the service. He or she may not wish to undertake such a challenge, and if not, ask them if they will recommend someone else to whom you can discuss the procedure who might be willing to help you.

That being said, here’s my PERSONAL opinion on the subject. Performing such an intricate color service IS doable, but there’s more to hair color services than the initial color job. It’s the “follow-up” services – the color retouch – that will present insurmountable problems since in order to cover the new growth after six weeks, your stylist will have to try and isolate the exact same hairs to prevent the unpigmented hairs from being colored, or else gradually see your hair grow darker and darker as a result of more and more of the gray hairs getting caught in subsequent color services.

And your new growth will likely grow back white again, leaving you with the problem of “skunk stripe”. You can use the base-breaking trick of coloring the new growth only and leave the ends of the hair alone, but that will only carry you so far. Eventually, the solidly colored new growth will be long enough that the hairs that are half-colored and half-white will become rather apparent.

Conversely, growing out the color will be equally unattractive – unless you are suited to an edgy, punkish, spiky style.

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