Whether you’re a plucker or patient enough to wait until your next touch-up appointment, grey hairs can be a pesky pain. The stigma is slowly fading, however, with more women than ever embracing their natural greys, and 34-year-old Raeann White from Bristol is hot on that trend.
After finding her first grey at just 15 years old, she took to frequently dyeing her locks to combat the silver streaks, but at 33 she said enough is enough and “the response has been amazing,” she tells HELLO! Read on to discover why Raeann feels so great and what the process of going back to her roots entailed…
“I was absolutely mortified when my first grey hair was noticed by a peer at school when I was just 15 years old. I would pull my greys out and continued to do so whilst they were quite sporadic,” confess Raeann.
By her mid-twenties, Raeann’s hair was half grey and she took to colouring it every two to three weeks. “Having to ensure it was coloured in time for events and trying to work it into everyday mum life was exhausting,” she recalls. Root touch-up powders and sprays became her best friends as the greys would pop up a week after being dyed.
So, what encouraged the big change? “Every time I had to colour my hair, I would moan and get annoyed. My partner suggested embracing it multiple times and initially I said, ‘Absolutely not’. But I did some research and started following a number of grey hair influencers, including Miranda Parker, and was truly inspired after seeing how amazing it could look. I then thought, ‘Okay, let’s do it’ and here we are!”
What are the steps to embracing grey hair if you normally dye it?
Raeann explains: “My hair started off very dark and long, and it’s also quite fine and fragile. With the much-needed help of hairdresser Victoria Reynolds, we cleansed out the colour, making my hair orange, I then had a few highlighting sessions over six months. I have had a lot of the length chopped off gradually to make it healthy and to speed up the process. In March 2025, I had the final [chop].”
Now, Raeann couldn’t be happier with her locks. “Strangers often come up to me and tell me how lovely my hair is or ask what colour has been used to achieve it. It’s really nice to see that the hard work has paid off,” she says. “Plus, my hair is so much softer, healthier, and I am thoroughly enjoying the lack of maintenance and freedom that comes with not having to colour it all the time.” Ironically, after all of the worry about what people might think, Raeann gets “more compliments now than ever” on her lovely hair.
Raeann’s before and after photos
Encouraging others to join her, but remaining realistic, Raeann explains: “The first 6-12 months are the hardest, but stick with it and you’ll overcome that hurdle, and you will be so pleased you’ve done it.”
Sadly, there still seems to be a stigma around women’s greys as opposed to men’s, Raeann points out. “Men get the whole ‘silver fox’ and getting ‘better with age’ response. Yet when women say they’re going to do it, it is often met with resistance and comments like, ‘You’re going to look older’, ‘You’re letting yourself go’, etc. I feel there is a lot more pressure on women to maintain their hair colour but there shouldn’t be.”
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