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From silver vixen to salt and pepper, maintain your colour with our top picks
With more of us opting to let our natural greys show through it would be easy to think that, minus the monthly salon visits or sessions over the bathroom sink, natural grey hair equals no maintenance. But you’d be wrong.
While it’s true you’ll be getting back those hours you spent in the salon chair, you do still need to give your hair some TLC to ensure your greys looks their very best. So, if you want grey hair that has strangers stopping you in the street to tell you how much they love your shade, the place to start is with your shampoo.
Grey hair shampoos will usually contain a purple toning element, as, just like with blonde hair, natural white or grey can be prone to yellowish tones or brassiness, and the lighter your natural grey the worse these can be.
The violet colour you see when you pour these shampoos out into your hand corrects the yellow. But while toning down these shades is key, grey hair also needs a little more than that, which is why not all blonde hair shampoos work (we found plenty that didn’t).
Session stylist and celebrity hairdresser (and the man who tends to our grey) Chad Maxwell explains: “Greys are naturally a stronger, stubborn texture and may have a wave even if the rest of your hair doesn’t. Because of this, a hydrating shampoo is essential. If the hair isn’t hydrated it will look dull and be harder to style”.
When testing grey hair shampoos, we were looking for two main things – how the shampoo cleansed and cared for our greys and what each shampoo specifically did for the colour. We used them in rotation with other shampoos that suited our hair’s needs – which, as a general rule, was about every three to four washes.
The shampoos that impressed us the most delivered a nourishing and moisturising cleanse whilst also boosting the tone of our greys and removing and yellowing. We tested these on hair that’s around 95 per cent natural grey, that sits in the whiter toned spectrum, and here’s what we found...
Kevin Murphy’s blonde angel wash was easily the best all rounder for both colour boosting and nourishing. However, we’d definitely recommend the versatile and affordable hair drops from The Hair Boss as a savvy purchase.
Give thirsty tresses a little TLC with the best hair masks for hydrating dry and damaged locks