There is a moment, usually in unforgiving daylight, when you notice it is no longer one rogue strand at the temple. There is a whole section. And because beauty is a market as much as an art form, there is now a shelf of serums promising to address it, which raises the entirely reasonable question of what any topical product can realistically do.
Here is the honest framing. Hair goes grey because the pigment-producing cells in the follicle gradually stop producing melanin, and how early that happens is largely written into your genes and your family line. No cream applied to the outside of a hair fibre can put pigment back into a strand that grew out without it. What care can do — and this is not nothing — is change how your grey looks and behaves, which is usually the real complaint.
Grey hair is a different fibre, not just a different colour
Without pigment, hair often grows coarser, wirier and more transparent. It reflects light differently, so it can look frizzy at the crown when the rest of your hair looks smooth. Many women also find their scalp produces less oil as the years pass, so the lengths have less natural conditioning travelling down them.
Treat it accordingly. Move to a richer conditioner than you used at thirty, and use a mask weekly rather than when you remember. Leave-in products matter more than they used to: a light oil or cream through the mid-lengths tames the wiriness and, crucially, adds shine. Grey hair without shine reads as dull; grey hair with shine reads as silver, and that difference is almost entirely down to condition.
