The Grey Transition Timeline: Month by Month
The first question everyone asks about going grey is “how long will it take?” The honest answer depends on two things: how long your hair is, and how much old colour is sitting on it.
Hair grows roughly a centimetre a month. If your hair reaches your shoulders, that’s a couple of years before every coloured strand has grown out naturally. Nobody wants to spend two years looking half-finished, which is why our Grey Transition Programme isn’t about waiting. It’s about making every stage look deliberate.
Here’s what that looks like, month by month.
Week Minus One: The Grey Blueprint
Before any colour goes on, we sit down for your Grey Blueprint consultation. We look at how much grey you have and where it sits, what’s on your hair already, and what you want it to look like a year from now.
We’ll strand test a hidden section of your lengths to see how the old colour lifts, and patch test your skin at least 48 hours before your colour appointment. You’ll leave with a written plan, a session date and a realistic timeline.
Day One: The Break
This is the big one. Expect a long appointment with a senior colourist, often three to four hours.
Fine highlights lift your coloured lengths up towards your natural grey. Lowlights keep depth, so the result looks rich rather than washed out. Bond protection runs throughout, and a gloss at the end ties every tone together.
You walk out with no hard line. Most people describe the result as “expensive highlights”. The grey is already in there, you’ve just stopped fighting it.
Weeks One to Six: Settling In
Your natural grey keeps growing, and because the lengths have been blended to meet it, the regrowth looks like part of the design rather than a problem.
The gloss softens over these weeks. Use a silver shampoo once a week (not every wash) and a heat protectant every time you style. Our guide to Keeping Grey Bright covers the full routine.
Weeks Six to Ten: The Refine
By now there’s more real grey at the root, and we can see exactly how it’s coming through. Temples first? A streak at the front? Salt and pepper all over? We adjust placement around your actual pattern, retone, and start shaping the cut so each trim removes more of the old colour.
This is the appointment where it stops looking like blended colour and starts looking like your grey.
Months Three to Twelve: The Release
From here, the work is mostly the cut and the tone. Regular trims take the remaining old pigment off the ends, and a Silver Gloss every six to eight weeks keeps everything cool and bright.
Shorter hair can be fully through in a matter of months. Longer hair takes longer, but it looks intentional the whole way.
Short Hair vs Long Hair
Length changes the timeline more than anything else.
Pixie and short crops are the quickest. With hair only a few centimetres long, a couple of cuts can take most of the old colour away, and many people are fully through within three or four months. The Break may be lighter, too, because there’s less coloured hair to blend.
Bobs and collarbone length usually settle into their grey within six to nine months. The Refine does a lot of the heavy lifting here, and a slightly shorter cut along the way speeds things up without a dramatic chop.
Long hair takes the longest, but it’s also where the programme earns its keep. Instead of a two-year grow-out with a visible stripe, the lengths are blended to meet your grey, so it reads as dimensional colour while it grows. Some clients choose a single bigger cut partway through. That’s your call, and we’ll talk it through at The Refine.
Year Two and Beyond: The Tail
Once the old colour has gone, you’re left with healthy, natural grey and a much lighter routine: a Silver Gloss every six to eight weeks, a good cut and the right home care. Compared with a root tint every four weeks, it’s a very different calendar, and a very different bill. We’ve costed it in Grey Blending vs Root Tint.
Ready to start your timeline? Book a Grey Blueprint consultation and we’ll map it out for you.
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