Why gray blending takes so much longer than highlights
Why Gray Blending Takes Longer
If you're a stylist who's thinking about adding gray blending, or you've just started, you've probably noticed it takes longer than a regular highlight service. Here's why.
With a regular highlight, you go through the head in a pattern you can repeat from client to client. Foils go in all the way to the root, and the pattern transfers from one head to the next.
Gray blending asks for more thought. You're following the gray pattern, and that pattern is different on every person.
Often the gray comes in as a salt and pepper mix, with single hairs scattered in a way you can't follow with foils unless you go hair by hair.
You don't have to go that far, but you do work in smaller sections, sometimes baby lights and sometimes smaller than that. You put light where the hair is light and dark where the hair is dark. You also follow the growth pattern, so there's a lot more thinking about placement than with a regular highlight.
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You don't have to go that far, but you do work in smaller sections, sometimes baby lights and sometimes smaller than that. You put light where the hair is light and dark where the hair is dark. You also follow the growth pattern, so there's a lot more thinking about placement than with a regular highlight.
That means more time for the client and more time for you, and it's a big reason gray blending costs more. You're charging for the time, and you're also charging for the expertise it takes to do it well.
Here's the good news. It gets faster.
Some areas are mostly dark with just a few salts, and those have shortcuts that don't take nearly as long. I've gotten much faster since 2019, when I started focusing mainly on gray blending and transitions. It's efficient now, and it's become second nature.
At first, though, you have to accept that you're going to put the time in. Your first few will take a long time. That's where you build your own style, procedure, and process, and you'll use it for years. I knew mine would be slow, so I let them be slow and learned as I went.
I'll be honest that I dreaded those long appointments in the beginning.
A long service takes a toll on your body, because you're on your feet and holding positions for hours.
It also takes a toll on your mind, because you're focused the whole time and the client is counting on you to get it right. Then there's the emotional side, with the pressure and the expectations that come with a big transformation. Most of us feel all of that behind the chair and just keep going.