Transitioning to Gray Hair With Highlights: Top Expert Tips

Looking to embrace your grays? An expert dishes out tips on transitioning to gray hair with highlights, including blending gray hair and growing out gray hair, and how to care for your new hue at home.

By Jamie Allison Sanders & Powered By L’Oreal Professional Products Division

Update Date: 31 Aug 2026

Transitioning to Gray Hair With Highlights: Top Expert Tips

Why Use Highlights to Transition to Gray?

Growing out gray hair all in one fell swoop can be a time-consuming (and frankly, frustrating) process. Easing into your new hue with the help of highlights, however, can be a great way to slowly transition to your natural hue. Keep reading to learn why.

Blends new growth with existing color

Highlighting gray hair can be a great option if you wish to blend your silvery strands and roots seamlessly. This helps soften the contrast between your dyed strands and natural grays, making for a smoother transition while you wait for your silvers to grow in completely.

Adds dimension and brightness

There’s nothing worse than hair that looks dull, flat, and lifeless. Unfortunately, gray hair can take on those traits, since the hair follicles stop producing the melanin that gives hair its color. Transitioning to gray hair with highlights can help prevent that dull, monotone look, since it mimics natural sun-kissed tones while simultaneously softening harsh lines.

Minimizes maintenance

If you don’t want to spend half your life in the salon chair getting root touch-ups, highlights for gray hair are going to be your new best friend. Just think: longer periods between salon visits, and fewer full-color treatments. Highlights can give your hair the appearance of a just-done look for a lot longer than those targeted root touch-ups actually can.

Types of Highlights Ideal for Going Gray

Babylights

Papanikolas often relies on the babylight technique when he’s blending gray hair. As the name suggests, babylights are a type of highlight inspired by the sunkissed strands seen in children’s hair after a day in the sunshine. They’re subtle, fine, and natural-looking, and can help fuse your existing dyed color with your current areas or scatterings of gray.

Lowlights

If you’re a dark brunette who isn’t fully gray yet, you may want to try lowlights to cover grays, since adding highlights can actually over-accentuate their appearance. If your grays are a bit more prominent, lowlights can also add depth, contrast, and richness to your natural color.

Balayage

Balayage is a freehand highlighting technique that creates a natural-looking transition of color from your roots to ends. This creates natural-looking highlights. In the case of transitioning to gray hair with highlights, balayage is a great choice, since it can help blur the lines between gray and pigmented strands.

Silver or ash-toned highlights

Opt for cool, ashy tones to emphasize grays, or silvery ones to complement them. Either way, you can add shine and polish to your gray tresses.

Top Expert Tips for Transitioning to Gray Hair Gracefully

1. Work with a colorist experienced in blending gray hair

When you start going gray, it’s best to get expert advice. Going for a personalized approach with your stylist is absolutely key. A trained colorist will customize your highlights for gray hair based on your current shade and skin tone.

2. Start slow and build over time

You don’t have to do too much at once. Ask your colorist to begin with face-framing or partial highlights, and then gradually increase to a full head of highlights for a more natural progression.

3. Choose the right highlight tone for your gray

Those with lighter hair will have an easier time transitioning into gray hair using highlights. Neutral shades like soft blonde, mushroom brown, light copper, and caramel blonde balayage are just a few shades that play well with blondes and grays.

4. Use toners to control brassiness

“If you are using highlights to help minimize the gray, then violet-based shampoos will help neutralize unwanted yellow tones and give the blonde [and gray] a more balanced tone,” says Papanikolas.

5. Cut strategically for the transition

Gray hair can benefit from not just more frequent cuts, but ones that are more strategic. Try a layered haircut or a shorter hairstyle, which can help blend gray hair more evenly.

6. Nourish hair with moisture and protein

Once your strands lose their color, they may become coarser, drier, brittle, or even wiry. Deep conditioners, hair masks, and bond-repairing treatments are essential for restoring moisture to your hair.

7. Embrace the process mentally and emotionally

Ultimately, going gray is a big change. Embracing this new hair color with confidence is part of the overall transformation, and it can be extremely empowering.

Gray Hair Maintenance Tips

Use color-safe, sulfate-free products

If you’ve decided to transition to gray hair with highlights or lowlights, you’ll need to update your haircare routine. “ Color-safe shampoo is mandatory when doing gray coverage, as permanent color can quickly fade and oxidize,” says Papanikolas.

Incorporate toning products

Using toning hair products can help neutralize these unwanted warm tones to keep your hair color cool and bright.

Protect hair from heat and UV rays

If you love flat ironing your hair and then heading out into the sunshine, beware—both heat styling and sunshine can fade highlights and grays.