Redheads and Achromotrichia: Do Gingers Go Grey?

Everyone seems to have something to say about redheads – they’re fiery, they’re soulless, they’re vampires!

While some things you hear about gingers are crazy myths, the one about redheads not going grey isn’t a myth at all – it’s true! And all thanks to our weird and wonderful ginger genetics.

Going grey may be inevitable for most people as they get older, but not for redheads. Instead, we go through something else: achromotrichia.

Simply put, achromotrichia is the absence of pigment in the hair. But while non-redheads gradually go grey and then perhaps to fully white hair, redheads actually retain their ginger colour for a lot longer, skipping out the greying stage. And of course, if you use henna-infused hair products for redheads, you can keep the gingerness for longer in a natural-looking way (much better than reaching for the dye).

When our red hair follicles stop producing its gingerish pigment, we instead fade from red through a glorious spectrum of faded copper to rosy-blonde colours, through to silvery-white.

So the next time someone asks you whether redheads go grey, you can confirm the classy fading of ginger hair to silvery-white, and educate them on the ways of achromotrichia.