HOW MANY SHADES OF GRAY ARE THERE?
More than Mother Nature can count. We’ve had fun talking about silver, pewter, ice, charcoal, steel, gunmetal, and on and on, but why does gray hair take on so many individual hues? It starts with your pigmented color. You don’t lose pigment all at once. And when you do lose it, your hair actually becomes transparent. Hair fiber has no color; the cuticle, the outermost protective layer, is transparent. When we see a blonde or a brunette, we perceive color because of the pigment shining through. Eumelanin gives hair a brown to black cast. Phaeomelanin reflects as blonde, gold, auburn and red. That’s how we “see” hair color. When melanin production slows down, it does it at its own pace. There’s a biological reason why, and you can read all about that in the book Going Gray, Looking Great! But, suffice it to say, your hair has its own timetable. Some of the melanin will disappear early, some later. Eventually, your hair will be colorless, without any melanin at all. When that happens you
