Sunshine Coast women are ditching hair dye as they embrace their “sparkles” and natural beauty.
For some it started during pandemic lockdowns when hairdresser appointments were an impossible luxury.
It’s also part of a burgeoning trend of confident women — including the world’s biggest celebrities — showing they have nothing to hide as they flaunt their silvery locks.
Supermodel Kristen McMenamy, British Vogue’s Sarah Harris, Sarah Jessica Parker and Andie MacDowell have all been spotted making the grey hair movement mainstream.
For 38-year-old Currimundi mother Nienke Schut, showing off her natural hair colour was something she decided to embrace after years of box dying.
She said she felt comfortable in her own skin and was more than happy to “ditch the dye”.
“I always coloured my hair myself and the grey came back really quickly and I thought ‘Why am I still doing this, I think I can rock the grey’, so I decided to ditch the dye and just be me and embrace it,” she said.
“This is me, I’ve never been a real fan of makeup and I’ve always been confident and liked myself.
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“I think if you are confident, then you can be comfortable in your own skin and show that to other people.
“Now that I made the switch to go grey, I see so many other young women around the school of my kids, or at the beach or the shops are doing the same.
“So, I hope that more people will do that and be confident with themselves.”
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Award-winning hairdresser Samantha Jones, of Ms Monaco Hair Society in Sippy Downs, told Sunshine Coast News she had seen a “massive trend” of people embracing their natural colour.
She said hiding or maintaining grey hairs could be costly and time-consuming and she was pleased to see women looking at colouring options to “blend” those silver strands in.
“We call them sparkles in the salon and the women really like it,” Ms Jones said.
“When a woman starts to experience that grey hair coming through a few things can happen.
“They might start to lose their confidence and they spend years trying to cover it up and find out it can be an expensive process if they are coming to the salon every three weeks, and very time consuming as well.
“What we are seeing more of is not necessarily women just going grey but expanding the amount of time in between their hair services and actually blending those greys.”
Ms Jones, who recently won the trades and services category for small business at the 2021 Sunshine Coast Business Awards, said rather than fully colouring hair from roots to bottom or re-tinting regrowth, clients were opting for a process of transition to blend old colour with natural greys.
“They still get the luxury of coming to the salon and wearing different colours and having different dimension in their hair without going completely grey,” she said.
“We work on the process of transitioning to natural or giving more longevity between visits if they don’t want to go completely natural just yet.”
Tewantin hairdresser Sharon Nightingale, who runs Hussh Hair Boutique at Noosa Marina, said a recent trend of silver and ashy colours in the younger generation had given older generations more confidence in going grey and glamorous.
“Embracing the natural grey hair has definitely become a growing trend in men and women across the country,” she said.
“Our colour companies are continually developing new improved colour technology, and as a colourist we have been using these grey/silver/ashen tones more and more on the younger generation to infuse this smokey silver hue as a colour trend.
“I feel this has also given the mature generation more confidence in embracing their natural silver and grey tones giving women and men a glamorous fashionable edge to their look.”
Ms Nightingale said going grey did not always suit everyone’s complexion or features, but that there were many techniques within the industry to compliment everyone.
“In salon we are forever changing the way we approach colouring grey hair depending on the trend and the client suitability.
“We use many techniques to either grow out existing colour or simply adding grey highlights or dark grey lowlights to already grey hair.”
She also said maintaining grey hair required the correct shampoo and toners to keep it looking fresh, shiny and fabulous.
