I stopped booking the four-week appointment on a Tuesday and did not tell anyone for two months, which is roughly how long it took before anyone noticed. Going grey takes most people somewhere between 12 and 24 months depending on their length, and the single thing that decides whether they finish is not patience but whether they had a plan for months four through ten. Hair grows about half an inch a month, so at month six you are carrying roughly three inches of your actual color and a line that is genuinely visible in photographs. This guide covers the arithmetic, the three routes out, what each month actually looks like, and where people stop.
The Arithmetic Nobody Runs Before Going Grey
Most people decide on aesthetics and then discover the money afterwards, which is backwards. Covering greys at a salon every four to five weeks runs roughly $90 to $180 a visit depending on region and length, which lands somewhere near $1,100 to $2,000 a year, every year, indefinitely. Eleven years of that schedule is what finally ended mine, and the ending arrived as arithmetic rather than inspiration. I sat down with the number for one more decade and could not make it feel worth it.
The comparison that matters is this one. A transition costs money up front, in blending sessions or a correction, but it is a project with an end date, and the upkeep afterwards is a fraction of the covering cycle. Covering has no end date at all, and its price rises with the grey it is fighting. Neither choice is wrong, but only one of them is usually priced honestly before it is chosen, and it is not the transition.
The Three Routes Out
Every transition is one of three plans, and they differ in time, money, and how much of the in-between you are asked to live through. None is the obvious answer, and a good colorist will price all three before recommending any of them.
Growing out with cuts is the slowest and the cheapest: you stop coloring, trim on a schedule, and let the line grow down until it is gone. It takes the full 12 to 24 months and asks you to live with the demarcation line for most of it, which is the part that ends more transitions than any other. Blending with highlights or lowlights is the middle road: a colorist softens the line with pieces placed through the grow-out, at $150 to $300 a session and usually two to four sessions across the whole transition. The in-between becomes wearable, and the total lands between the other two routes in both time and money.
A full correction to silver is the fastest and the most demanding: existing color is lifted out and the whole head toned to silver in one coordinated project. It is a major chemical service, never a single easy appointment on most bases, running two to four sessions and $400 to $900 in total, varying by region, salon tier, and length, and it carries a real integrity cost that a careful colorist will name before you book. It is the right answer for some people and the wrong one for others, and the consultation is where that gets decided.
| Route | Total time | Total cost | Integrity cost | The in-between |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grow out with cuts | 12 to 24 months | Trims only | None | The full line, the whole way |
| Blend with pieces | 10 to 18 months | $300 to $1,200, two to four sessions | Low, limited to the pieces | Softened and wearable |
| Full correction to silver | 2 to 4 months | $400 to $900, two to four sessions | The highest of the three | Barely any |
The Month-by-Month Reality
Months one through three are deceptively easy, because the growth is under an inch and hides in the part and the hairline, and the decision still feels new. This is where resolve is cheapest and worth the least. The months that decide the transition come later, and they are worth knowing in advance because almost nobody warns you about them.
Months four through eight are the part of the journey that ends it for most people. The line is now two to four inches long, too wide to ignore and too short to look finished, and photographs start showing a two-tone effect that no amount of styling quite resolves. I remember month six as the hardest of my fourteen, not because it was dramatic but because it was neither one thing nor the other, and most of the people I have talked through a transition name the same window as the moment they nearly went back to the salon. If you are going to prepare for one part of this process, prepare for this one, with a plan rather than encouragement: a blending session, a shorter cut, or a decision made in advance about what month seven will look like.
Months nine through fourteen are where the line finally becomes a style instead of a problem, because the grey is now long enough to read as intentional and the colored ends are short enough to trim away in stages. By the end, most people have cut the last of the colored length, and the hair that is left is theirs. I cut my hair short twice during my own grow-out, once because it genuinely helped and once out of pure panic, and I will tell you that both versions were the right decision on the day they were made. What comes after month fourteen is not a transition anymore. It is maintenance, and it is smaller and cheaper than anything you have done so far.
Nine years of watching this decision from both sides of it has left me with one fixed belief. The people who do not finish a transition did not run out of patience, because patience is not what the middle of it asks for. They ran out of plan, somewhere around month five, when the line was at its worst and nothing had been decided about what to do with it.
Nobody quits a transition from impatience. They quit it because months four through ten had no plan.
What the Hair Itself Needs to Know
Grey hair is structurally different from pigmented hair, and the advice written for the second kind fails the first kind for exactly that reason. It tends to be coarser and wirier, more porous, and it takes and holds tone differently, which is why a routine that worked for thirty years can start producing dullness or yellowing without anything changing in it. The texture shift is real, it is not damage, and it has its own care requirements, which the maintenance guide covers in full.
One starting point deserves saying plainly, because it is the most common real one and almost no transition content addresses it. If your hair has been box-dyed or salon-covered for years, your grow-out begins under a layer of old color, and that changes every timeline and every route on this page. Blending over it behaves differently than blending over virgin hair, and a correction over years of dark dye is a longer, more careful project than the same correction over lighter or untreated hair. Bring the full history to the consultation, including the boxes, because the plan built on it is the only plan that holds.
Where any toner or gloss enters the plan, a patch test comes first if the product is new to your skin. One routing note matters here: if thinning or shedding arrives alongside the transition, that is a separate conversation with a dermatologist, not a stage of going grey, and no amount of color planning treats it.
The Signs You Are Ready for Each Stage
Readiness for this decision is practical rather than emotional, and these are the marks of it. If you can say what covering costs you per year without guessing, you have done the arithmetic. If you have decided which of the three routes you can afford in both money and patience, you have a plan rather than a wish. If you know what you will do in month six, specifically, you are more prepared than almost anyone who starts. If you have named the colored history on your head, out loud, to the person who will be lifting it, the plan you get back will be the honest one.
- You can state your yearly covering cost without estimating
- You have priced all three routes, not just the one you prefer
- You have a specific answer for months four through eight
- You have disclosed every layer of color your hair is carrying
- You have decided in advance what the first cut will be
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does going grey actually take?
Between 12 and 24 months for most people, and the variable is length rather than willpower. At roughly half an inch of growth a month, shoulder-length hair needs around 20 to 24 months to grow out entirely, while a chin-length bob can be through it in 12 to 14. Cutting shorter is the only thing that genuinely shortens the timeline, which is why so many transitions begin with a haircut.
Can I speed up the transition?
In two ways, both real and both with prices. Blending sessions at $150 to $300 make the in-between wearable without shortening it much, and a full correction to silver compresses the whole journey into two to four months at $400 to $900, with the integrity cost that comes with lifting years of color at once. What does not work is rushing the grow-out itself, because hair grows at its own pace and the line moves at half an inch a month no matter what you do to it.
Will the in-between stage look terrible?
Months four through eight are genuinely the hardest part, and saying otherwise would be a disservice to the person about to live through them. The line is visible, photographs are unflattering for a season, and most people who quit do it in exactly this window. The difference between a miserable middle and a tolerable one is almost always a plan, usually a blending session or a shorter cut, decided before the window arrives rather than inside it.
Is going grey cheaper than covering?
Almost always, over any horizon longer than a couple of years, because covering runs $1,100 to $2,000 a year indefinitely while a transition is a project with an end date. Even the most expensive route, a full correction at $400 to $900, costs less than a single year of four-week appointments at most salon prices. The honest comparison is not the transition against zero but the transition against the next decade of covering, and that arithmetic rarely comes out in favor of covering.
What if my hair has been dyed for years?
Then your transition starts under that history, and the plan has to be built around it rather than despite it. Blending and corrections both behave differently over box dye or years of salon color, and a strand test usually comes before any real lifting, because old color can resist or grab in ways virgin hair never does. None of this disqualifies you from any of the three routes. It changes the session counts and the prices, and a colorist who asks about the history before quoting is the one giving you the honest version.
The Decision Is Smaller Than It Looks
Going grey is not a leap and it is not a statement; it is a project with a budget, a timeline, and a middle, and it goes best for the people who treat it as exactly that. Run the arithmetic, choose the route you can actually live with for fourteen months, and make the plan for month six before you need it. When the route is chosen, the next conversation is the one about which of the three it should be, in detail, with your hair in front of a colorist.
If you are somewhere in the middle and want to know what your month is supposed to look like, ask in the comments below with where you are in the timeline. — Nora