My hair went totally grey at 35 – this is my photo diary of giving up dye

Picture the scene. It’s 2020. The pubs are shut. You have to actually antibac your groceries when you get back from the shops. And, sadly, you can’t get your hair done.

My hair used to really bother me as a teenager. It was thick, a nightmare to straighten (God forbid it had a curl in it!) and I was constantly covering my greys up.

Yup, you read that right, I’ve been ‘going grey’ since I screamed in the mirror ‘MUM, I HAVE A GREY HAIR!’ at the ripe age of 14 years old.

Here I am at 20 years old, posing proudly at a wedding and those pesky greys showing through in my roots. I spent so much money (and time!) covering them but, as a typical skint student, I couldn’t always make it work.

Since then, I’ve grown to love it. I embrace the thickness, I go big on the wave and, in more recent years, have grown my greys in a manner I like to call ‘grey-cefully’. See what I did there?

I had such fun scrolling back through my photo album looking for how I went from a golden brown to silver grey over the last few years. Let’s start during the salon shutdown era, in May 2020.

Now, I don’t quite know why I look so serious, but please ignore the expression (and the eyebrows!) and look at that patch of white coming in.

At first, I panicked, then I covered it up with a cheap root spray. And then? Well, then I just couldn’t be bothered. There were far worse things going on in the world and, ultimately, we weren’t seeing anyone to receive judgement, were we? Mr Pucino didn’t mind and I decided it was time.

Next up, August 2020. We stuck to the pandemic rules and managed to head up to Scotland for a road trip. I visited my hometown hairdresser and she mentioned something called a ‘money piece’. I’d never heard of it but was up for a change, so she took that grey patch and threaded it down into the front of my hair with some lovely highlights.

I set off on my roadtrip, saw lots of Highland cows and headed back to London proudly displaying my new ’do.

We arrive at Christmas 2020. I’ve kept the lighter front part and my roots are really quite ‘bad’ here – although the Santa hat is hiding the worst of them. I’d just discovered I was pregnant here (we thought there was just one baby, but found myself eight months later giving birth to identical twins, but that’s a story for another time).

I was conscious that having babies would leave me with much less time and so was even more determined to let my hair do its thing – with a little help from the hairdresser when needed!

The next couple of years were filled with sleepless nights, remote working and a gradual decline in my visits to my hairdresser. We had started enhancing the greys with lowlights and highlights, but as I continued on my ‘grey-ceful’ journey, I realised I simply didn’t need them as much any more.

The ‘a-ha!’ moment came on a trip to Paris with some friends (you might recognise them!) in 2023. By now, I’m about 90% grey at the roots. You can really see that coming through on top here and all the years of colouring drifting to the bottom.

It was working!

Here, I’m 34. My little girls have finished nursery and are headed off to preschool (sob!). The brown is almost completely gone.

A year later, I’m at a work conference, I’ve chopped off the majority of that colour and the grey continues to shine.

And then, in 2025, it’s almost done. My hair is now 100% grey at the roots. I’m sat by the Thames enjoying a glass of rosé and nearly all that artificial colour is gone!

Then, I join the wonderful Good Housekeeping team and lovely beauty director Lynne treats me to a bob. Bam – the before and after pics speak for themselves. I’m now at the end of my ‘grey-ceful’ journey.

If you’ve taken anything from this article, let it be the fact that no one actually cares about your grey hairs, apart from you. If you have even the slightest inclination to go grey, then I’m happy to shout at you to DO IT.

Look at me here on my last birthday – completely grey and giddy with happiness.

It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. My hair is in such brilliant condition that I don’t even use conditioner anymore. It’s all my natural colour, and people stop me in the street asking if it’s ‘real’. They mean it as a compliment, I suppose, but I really feel strongly that we need to stop the social construct that grey is just for grannies. After all, I'm only 36 – but I’m very glad to be grey.