Q: Are there different shades of gray hair, or do they just appear different due to the mix of other hairs on the scalp? I'm trying to find out if all gray hair has a silvery appearance, or if some
of it is actually gray or white in color.
A: Once a hair has gone gray, it means the hair has lost its natural pigment.
The hair isn't actually 'gray' or 'white' but is rather translucent, appearing white (or gray) as a result of the color of the hairs surrounding it and the amount of light shining on it. This is why the more
gray hairs you have, the 'whiter' your hair appears.
To illustrate how it works, take a sheet of tracing paper (or tissue paper). Lay the tracing paper over colored sheets of paper and another sheet of tracing paper, then observe the color of the paper. The
more sheets of tracing paper you stack together, the whiter and more opaque the color becomes. When placed on top of colored paper, the tracing paper seems to absorb some of the color from the other papers.
This is similar to how gray hair works.
This also explains why hair appears darker when wet. Even pigmented hair is translucent and reflects and refracts light to some extent. When wet, the strands cling to one another, making them less penetrable
by light and causing them to appear darker. This effect is even more pronounced with gray hair, which has less opacity of its own. Try the tracing paper test again, but this time, mist the tracing paper with water.
