How To Get Soft-To-The-Touch Gray Hair

Hey everybody: it's beth welcome to infinite garden. This week, i'm responding to a viewer question. I was asked how i keep my gray hair soft. It seems to be fairly common that people notice that the hair that has gone gray tends to be a little bit more coarse and a little more prone to dryness. This is something that i experienced. I know not everyone does, but it is pretty common and i think that's what led to the question. So i'm happy to talk about that so today i have some products that i like to use to keep my hair, soft and i'll talk about how i apply them and when but before we get there. Let me first just apologize for the sound of my voice. Yes, i'm congested. Last week i was visiting my family and celebrating my birthday, and i did pick up a little bit of the you know what, and so i've been back now for a week and just recovering from that, although my energy level is a little low and i'm congested, I'M feeling much much better than i did a few days ago, so i thought i'd sit down and try to film this video. It should be pretty simple, so just excuse the sound of my voice. If you're new to my channel welcome on this channel, we talk about self-acceptance, authentic personal style and sometimes the expansion of consciousness. If that sounds good to you, i hope you stay and subscribe. Okay, some of the tips i'm going to share will kind of veer toward people who have texture more like mine. My hair is i've always called it curly, although of course it has a wave pattern, but it's in the it's in the textured hair family and in addition to being you know, textured curly, wavy, hair. The hair overall is very thick and coarse, and this is it's a general curl pattern in its natural state on my channel. You'Ll often see me with blown out hair. A blowout can be very convenient for me, but in the summertime, when it's humid, i prefer to wear it in its totally natural state. So this is both my natural texture and my natural color here now that i've grown out my gray. So since i've been managing my coarse curly hair for my entire life, i am a big fan of conditioners. I have a whole video on curly, hair and conditioning needs, so feel free to check that out after this one as well. But today i'm mostly going to talk about treatments after the shower. I use aveda's cherry almond, shampoo and conditioner. This is a product line that specifically calls out its hair softening properties and i've been using it for years. I find it to truly work on my hair texture type before i step out of the shower, i'm already using products that are prone to soften hair. But i wanted to talk a little bit about what happens after the shower and how. I make sure my hair stays soft as it dries and then, throughout the day, one of the most important products that i think you can use to keep your hair soft is a leave-in conditioner. The first product i wanted to talk about today is the one i have in my hair right now, and this is the product i picked up during my vacation. I was in minnesota home of aveda and there was an aveda salon in the hotel where i stayed and the cherry almond line that i was just talking about the shampoo and conditioner. They also make a leave-in conditioner, which i hadn't tried yet, and i realized when i got on vacation, that i didn't have everything that i needed and i really needed to get a leave-in conditioner. So i was happy to try this and so far i have been super happy with it. This product has the same scent as a cherry almond, shampoo and conditioner, which is cherry, extract and almond oil. It smells very lovely for those of you who have gray hair. You may appreciate that this is a colorless product, it won't add any color to your hair. Gray. Hair is prone to discoloration. So these things do matter. This has been really lovely. It'S an oil-rich, leave-in conditioner. So the way that i would use this is, after showering on very wet hair that i've just squeezed the excess water out. I would add a very good sized dollop of this leave-in conditioner to my hair. I would run this through my hair until it really felt as though i had a solid coating and then i'll show a little video i took last night. The first thing i would do is then just wrap this up in a big clip and let it sit in my wet head for a long time and i would say, like maybe a half an hour, while i'm putting on my evening skincare just really let that Sit in there, i would finish this step by adding a hair oil. I also have a whole video on hair oils and why, i think, they're great for gray, hair. Last night, i used the sicily, hair ritual oil. I'Ve had this one now, since i bought it last year and i'm down to the point now where i can't pump it out anymore. I have to take out the pump and pour it into my hand for the amount of hair i have. I would pour a dollop about that size into my palm and rub it through my fingers and make sure that i've got it. You know nicely distributed around my hair gently kind of coat it. So at this point last night in the evening i had the aveda cherry almond, leaving conditioner in my hair and then a healthy dollop of this hair oil. On top of that, so then, before i went to bed, i eventually put on something that that covers my shoulders. These two products, if allowed to touch the back of my skin, would break me out. Not everybody is prone to that, but i am, and i have found that it's important to keep all of these heavy products off of the skin on my shoulders. So i would put on something that covers my shoulders. Usually a cotton t, and i would let my hair down enough to start to air dry by the time i'm ready for bed, then what i would normally do is. I would go to sleep with my hair up. I would like lie against the pillow with my hair up and try to sleep on it like this all night, just kind of like like up like this, and i let it dry. While i'm sleeping, i have found that as long as it's like up and above my head, but not like encumbered with a barrette or a scrunchie, or anything like that. I have found that i wake up with really nice healthy, bouncy curls. They do sometimes need a little extra, so i might put a little more oil on to finish. I did that today, a little more oil will increase the shine and kind of bring down any kind of like fuzziness that you got from sleeping on it like that, and it also, you know, further protects the hair and, i think, contributes to its health and softness. Now this ritual that i have been doing has kept my hair, really really soft and, i think, really healthy. Since i've stopped dyeing my hair, the condition of it is so much healthier. I don't really get split ends anymore. It'S just generally stronger and healthier. This method will not abolish frizz from your hair. Necessarily it does help a lot, because my hair is so hydrated that when it wants to like rise up to the humidity, it's pretty well laden with moisture. So it's not quite as thirsty for the atmospheric moisture. So i was using this method last week, while i was on vacation and we were doing a great lakes tour rear on the coast of lake superior and lake michigan, which is you know, misty foggy very, very humid, and my hair definitely responded to the humidity. So i don't recommend this method as a way to eliminate frizz from your life, but i do recommend it as a way to get extremely soft touchable healthy hair. So that's my method and those are the products that i have in my hair today and the ones i've been using most recently. But i wanted to talk about a couple of other products, since both the aveda and the sicily are both higher and high ticket products, and they may not be available to you. I do have a couple of alternatives for both the leave-in conditioner and the oil, but i of course invite you to explore on your own as well another product that i've been using and i recommend, and it's available at sephora is mazani's 25 miracle cream. This is a product that, if you read on the back, it actually lists all 25 benefits. So they're, not just you know, throwing a number on the front. This is a product that offers both heat styling protection and uv protection. It'S also another colorless product which is really nice again for gray hair. It won't deposit any kind of color into your hair. I'Ve also used this product when i use my blower brush to blow out my hair because of the the heat protectant. So i think this one's great it smells really good as well, and i do expect that i'll, probably repurchase this one. This particular product was recommended to me by my hair stylist, who also has curly hair, and he put me on to this - and i love it. So this is a really good one as well, and then i've talked about this product on my channel before, but this one i've been using since it was first available on a website before you could get it at target. This is mixed, chicks, leave-in conditioner. This is a yellow product, so it will deposit a little color into your hair. So that's something if you're trying to avoid products with any kind of dye in it. This one. You know that might be a deal killer for you, but this product has been in my arsenal for over a decade what this leave-in conditioner does. That is different from these other two is that it does offer curl definition. If you use this in your hair and you let it air dry without breaking it up at all, you will get more of a casting curl casting, so this will do more to control your frizz than i think either of these other two products will both of The other two products do help with frizz, because they're so conditioning, but this one actually offers some hold against frizz. So if that's something that you're really trying hard to combat, i think that this product is a winner. This one is available at target and i don't know where else, but it's pretty widely available in the us markets - and i like this one - a lot - it doesn't smell like very much and you don't need much for it to be effective. I'Ve been using this for a really long time and then a couple of oil alternatives. You can just use pure argan oil. This is a 100 argan oil. This is excellent for your scalp. It'S excellent for your skin in general. This one won't. I wouldn't use this one if you're going to be doing heat styling, it doesn't offer thermal protection necessarily. I just would stay away from it personally if you're going to then apply a heat tool, but if you're going to air dry, the way i did this would be perfectly safe. This is, i think i got this one at target. This is shea moistures, but you can get argan oil just about anywhere. When i bought this bottle last year, i think it was under ten dollars. It'S a good one. Another oil that i don't recommend for heat styling, but i do recommend for softening is this. Is one i picked up at target as well? This is hollywood beauty. It says jojoba oil on it, but if you look at the ingredients i'll get close in on this, you can see that there's here you can see there's a whole. You know blend of oil types here when i use this one. I only need a small amount and i find it to be actually quite heavy. It doesn't quite glide over the hair the way the sicily one does, but i do think it provides incredible softening benefits. So i think that's a really good oil as well and again. I think this one was maybe under ten dollars, so there are high-end options and there are options available at both sephora and then drugstores as well. There are lots of good products on the market for softening, but i would say my major recommendation if you're looking to soften the coarseness and dryness of your gray hair, if you don't already include a leave-in conditioner in your routine or a hair oil, i think it's A really great thing to look into that's something that i have learned over a lifetime of caring for my coarse dry, curly hair. That'S only become more coarse and more dry as it has gone gray. So that's what i use personally and what i recommend now. I want to hear from you: do you use leave-in conditioners in your routine? What about hair oils? Please? Let me know what you recommend. Have you tried any of these products? I would love to hear if you have any recommendations that you think that i should try. I hope you're all doing well out there and i hope you have a great week ahead. Thank you so much for watching talk soon.