By now, mums all around Australia have been self-isolating for weeks and this means no visits to the salon for monthly root touch-up to cover stubborn grey hair strands.

For Mother’s Day, knowing that you can’t pay your favourite hairdresser a visit can feel particularly painful, as many mums usually would have pampered and spoilt themselves with a colour refresh and a trim for this very special day.

But lockdown has given us a unique opportunity to look at beauty from a new perspective with the normal social barriers and pressures removed, so if there was ever a time to embrace our natural look and make the transition to grey or white hair, now is the time.

But if you do make the decision to celebrate your silver mane, you might wonder what the easiest and quickest way is to take this leap?

Embrace Your Grey Hair

Jo Sym Choon, Revlon Professional Ambassador, Hairdresser with 30+ years’ experience and mum of two shares her tips and tricks for styling and caring for grey hair at home, to ensure women feel comfortable embracing their grey hair roots this Mother’s Day.

1. What are some tips for transitioning to grey hair at home, if you’re not quite ready to take the step just yet?

My best advice to ease into grey hair is to use a conditioning colour treatment to give your grey hair a subtle tone of colour to mix with your natural grey. Revlon Professional Nutri Colour Creme is a great product for this, it’s a nourishing colour treatment that leaves the hair feeling soft and shiny, while also containing colour pigment that lets you blend those few wisdom hairs without creating colour build up.

More importantly, it is completely safe to use at home and the colour washes out after six times so you can experiment without zero consequences. Nutri Colour comes in some crazy high fashion colours, and for those women with major white roots and dark tint line, why not have some fun and turn your roots hot pink or grass green. Let’s start a new trend in isolation! When it comes to styling grey hair that is appearing in lockdown, I would suggest styling the hair by adding a zigzag parting to disguise the root demarcation. You can also try to backcomb the root area to again soften the line between colour treated and your natural grey hair. And finally, eyeshadow! Believe it or not, but applying a few strokes of eyeshadow in a similar tone to your coloured hair actually works!

2. When we can pay our hairdresser a visit again, what are some tips if someone wants to transition to their natural grey hair?

If you have less than 50% white hair, then my advice would be to add highlights to blend the white hairs which help disguising the regrowth slightly and make the transition easier.  If you have more than 50% white hair and have tinted it darker for years, then my advice would be to try transitioning to a Demi Colour, such as Revlon Professional Colour Excel.

This will give the white hair a blend of colour and not complete coverage. It will soften the regrowth and then long term will be easier to remove from the hair when you are ready for the next step. The next step I would then use a Revlon Professional Colour remover, I have had lots of successful results using this product. It gently erases build-up of artificial colour pigments leaving the hair that is coloured a lot lighter. It can be repeated and has no detrimental effect on the hair  From there, if condition allows, hair can be highlighted with a gentle lightening powder or even lighted all over and then toned with Revlon Colour excel to suit your skin tone.

3. What are some tips for caring and nurturing grey hair?

For aging hair three things happen. Like our skin, our hair changes with maturity. The protein produced to keep hair strong starts to lose its quality. Hair then can become brittle and lack strength and the moisture levels (like our skin) start to reduce, making the hair feel dry and appear frizzy or wiry. The melanin factory in the Follicle retires and closes down, our hair then loses its colour which results in white hair being left behind.

Revlon Eksperinece is a beautiful range that can cater for all these hair needs. Try using a shampoo and conditioner that will deliver moisture and protein. Even look for products that contain natural collagen to plump aging hair and make it feel and look softer.  Also, white hair can become vulnerable to picking up discoloration from the environment or incorrect products causing it to look yellow and dull. To prevent this, it is recommended to also have in your cupboard a clarifying shampoo that should be used every few weeks to remove and build up and followed by a shampoo or treatment that contains an anti-yellow pigment in it.I recommend Revlon Nutri Colour Creme 1001 1011 1012.

Revlon Eksperience range have a blonde/grey shampoo that helps to neutralise unwanted yellow. Try also Revlon Eksperience ‘purity shampoo’ great to remove build up.

4. What are some top styling tips for grey hair?

When styling white hair, like I mentioned above the moisture levels can make the hair look frizzy. The temptation is to iron the hair, which is a no go! Excessive heat will just create yellowing and will dehydrate the hair even more.  Try controlling the frizz with styling products. Use oils to add shine, but make sure the oils don’t make the hair look yellow-y.  Use heat protecting creams when you blow dry your hair and avoid products with too much alcohol, as they will dry hair out even more. A product I love using is Eksperince Wave remedy treatment, which makes my hair feel so soft and moisturised.

Lastly, for those few little wirey strays that refuse to settle down after you have dried it and styled it, spray a little hairspray on your hair and smoothen it with a tissue. It works a treat! But foremost have fun and embrace maturity, use as much help and tips as possible and experiment with new and different ideas.

Do you embrace your grey hair or hide it? Tell us in the comments below.