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Gray hair is more than an inevitability these days; it’s a statement. It can make you look older, but it also makes you appear more responsible and confident. Graying hair is often automatically associated with the older population, and with well maintained, healthy gray hair, you can gain the perception of both the knowledge associated with age and the vigor associated with youth.
Sadly, if your hair isn’t well maintained, going gray can have a negative effect on the way people perceive you. Thin, dry, or flyaway gray hair is more commonly associated with the less positive aspects of growing older. When this is the case, younger people may underestimate the capabilities of the older people based on that appearance. As a way to fight agism, keeping your gray hair in top condition will subtly influence those around you.
Of course, you may just be experimenting on with an eye-catching style as bleached silver hair is associated with a number of glamorous influencers. Bleaching your hair can come with a host of problems, though, many of which are shared by those going naturally gray. In both cases, the goal is the same: finding a product that provides you with healthy, shiny, voluminous gray hair.
Natural or Not?
A recurring theme you’ll see throughout our top eight is the choice between heavily restorative shampoos, with very little in the way of natural ingredients, and natural shampoos, with milder effects and well-known ingredients.
Modern science has come up with some amazing ways to treat hair damage, which are often much more effective than all-natural products. However, a growing number of people are becoming dissatisfied with the lax regulation of body care products and are sticking to all-natural products in order to be certain they know what’s in the bottle.
The US has no law requiring specific tests to be done to ensure that products are safe for use, which leaves the entire safety process in the hands of manufacturers. When choosing what products to buy, it’s often difficult to understand the technical names of the ingredients, and some people distrust anything they can’t pronounce.
Many ingredients in shampoos can have complicated names but are completely harmless and even natural, so don’t write something off just because it has too many syllables. That said, if you don’t have the time or inclination to research every chemical in your shampoo, it’s best to stick to organic, all-natural options so you can be certain that the ingredients have been in use for decades and any dangers are well known. But don’t be afraid to try the occasional synthetic product, provided it’s from a company you can trust. The best haircare products often contain a mixture of natural and synthetic ingredients, with scientists boosting what nature has provided.
We hope that our list of safe, effective shampoos for gray hair helps you find the product that best suits you, natural or synthetic. Gray hair is something to be proud of, and we want your eye catching silver locks looking their absolute best.
Our Top 8 Best Shampoos for Gray Hair in 2023
If you’ve just been using an everyday shampoo on your gray hair, now is an excellent time to try something new. A wide range of formulations on the market are suited for all hair types. Here’s our top eight to try out.
1. Blu Atlas Shampoo
It doesn’t matter if you’re going gray naturally or taking a shortcut, Blu Atlas Shampoo works equally well on natural and bleached gray hair. Both types of hair are easily overwashed and require a gentle, residue-free, phthalate-free, and paraben-free shampoo for day to day use. While you might occasionally want to swap it out for a purple shampoo or a volumizing shampoo, Blu Atlas Shampoo’s synthetic dye-free and silicone-free formulation means it doesn’t leave any buildup on your hair or cause any damage long term, so it’s perfect for regular use.
Blu Atlas uses only cruelty-free, vegan ingredients in their products, with over 95% of this shampoo’s ingredients derived from natural sources such as plants, fruits, and minerals. This makes it easy to skim the ingredients list to check for any unwanted additives. While synthetic products certainly have their place, for an everyday shampoo, you probably want to keep things natural.
Blu Atlas Shampoo is all natural but still manages to provide excellent cleansing power. This is due to the presence of one of the most popular gentle cleansers you’ll find in most quality shampoos, cocamidopropyl betaine (CAPB). CAPB is a naturally derived surfactant most commonly made from coconut oil. This soft and creamy cleanser only washes away the oils on the surface of your hair, without stripping away the naturally occurring oils from inside the hair shaft itself.
In order to ensure that dry hair gets the oils it needs, Blu Atlas has added jojoba oil to the mix. Thirsty hair absorbs jojoba oil easily due to the oil’s biocompatibility, or similarity, to natural body oils. Also, because CAPB dissolves oils instead of binding to them, it doesn’t wash all the jojoba oil away. This way, your hair can have a hydrated core without extra oil being left on the outside.
A touch of aloe and saw palmetto extract help soothe any irritation to the scalp and provide a pleasant scent. Saw palmetto can naturally cancel out dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a hormone your body naturally produces, which regulates how often your hair falls out. With DHT inhibited, hair stays in the growth phase for longer, leaving you with thicker hair.
The combination of these ingredients, plus a few others, is what makes Blu Atlas Shampoo unique. Its soothing, nourishing, and replenishing qualities, along with a great lather and even the potential to prevent hair loss, make it obvious why this shampoo is so popular.
2. Philip Kingsley Pure Blonde / Silver Shampoo
Philip Kingsley Pure Blonde / Silver shampoo is our top pick for synthetic shampoos due to its excellent cleansing abilities and pleasant scent. This shampoo does an excellent job of both washing off any yellow staining as well as depositing a near-invisible dusting of purple (popular in products for gray hair nowadays) to leave your hair a neutral silver. Let’s break down some of the synthetic ingredients that make this shampoo so popular.
In contrast to Blu Atlas’ all natural, gentle cleansing action, this is a much stronger shampoo. The main detergent used is sodium laureth sulfate (SLS), which has received a lot of negative attention in the past few years. SLS in small amounts isn’t harmful to your hair, but cheaper brands often include too much in their shampoos in order to produce a heavy lather. Using SLS too often or in higher proportions can strip healthy natural oils out of your hair, leaving it dry and requiring repeated moisture masks in order to restore shine.
Philip Kingsley is well aware of this, and has balanced the use of SLS with the same choice of gentle detergent Blu Atlas uses, cocamidopropyl betaine. The low concentration of SLS allows Pure Blonde / Silver to be harsh enough to remove some staining without damaging your hair. Pure Blonde / Silver also contains the natural ingredient hydrolyzed wheat protein, a vegan protein that can mimic the natural protein in your hair to fill in any gaps or cracks in the hair strands. This helps fill your hair strands out, making them less prone to future staining.
Other ingredients in this shampoo that may cause some of you to think twice are PEGs. It’s a good idea to think twice because cheap unregulated PEGs can have harmful effects when applied to the skin. However, the PEGs in this shampoo are of high quality, and are unlikely to contain any of the manufacturing contaminants that make cheap PEGs dangerous. These clean PEGs allow softening and strengthening ingredients to sink deep into the hair strands to revitalize the cores.
Overall, while the ingredients on the bottle may look scary, this is an excellently balanced formulation that’s safe to use once a week on your hair. Overuse may dry your hair out, so it’s better to alternate with a gentler shampoo. Due to the strength of this formula, once a week is enough to remove any built up stains and deposit a new layer of purple pigment, leaving you with soft, clean, silver hair.
3. Sachajuan Silver Shampoo
The entire Sachajuan line of haircare products are well known for their excellent quality and beautiful results, so we were glad to hear they had a shampoo specifically designed for gray hair. As with Philip Kingsley Pure Blonde / Silver formulation, this is a purple shampoo, which is immediately obvious as soon as you open the bottle. The liquid inside is a strong, dark purple, which will lightly stain your hands if you have dry skin or calluses. In particular, the color can linger around your cuticles, so you may want to wear gloves during application.
Although this shampoo can stain your hands is definitely a downside, it’s also unavoidable. All quality purple shampoos run the risk of giving your hands a faint bluish tint. Both your hair and the skin on your hands contain keratin, which is what the purple pigment sticks to. That means if you want the purple to stay in your hair after washing, it needs to be strong enough that it can stain your hands as well.
And this shampoo is certainly strong enough. Instructions recommend leaving it in your hair for 5 to 15 minutes, but we recommend starting around 5 minutes and seeing how your hair feels afterwards. Some people with thin or dry hair find this shampoo to be a little rough, and 5 minutes is often enough to see a noticeable difference. You also don’t need much of the shampoo to get good coverage, with a rich foamy lather forming easily after application.
The use of seaweed extract may play a part in smoothing out hair strands while simultaneously adding volume and strength, which is why Sachajuan products are so effective on most kinds of hair, including coily or curly locks. Although the strength of this shampoo means you’ll want to use a good conditioner afterwards, Sachajuan Silver definitely gets the job done.
4. Better Not Younger Silver Lining Shampoo
Better Not Younger’s Silver Lining shampoo is a mostly natural purple shampoo that works wonders on all hair types, gray or not. While this is a purple shampoo, the focus is more on revitalizing your scalp and replacing lost moisture in your hair. Silver Lining does reduce brassy tones, but it’s not as immediately effective as some of the others on this list. This is because it’s designed for regular use instead of as a once-a-week addition to your haircare routine.
The upside of using a gentler purple shampoo is that, because it’s for everyday use, the purple dye doesn’t need to be strong enough to last through multiple washes. This means you don’t have to worry about staining your hands or drying your hair out with harsh cleansers.
Better Not Younger utilizes a combination of argan oil and bamboo to add shine and strength to your hair, while burdock root, hops, and sage provide a variety of naturally sourced vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids. These can sink into your scalp and be absorbed by your hair producing cells. Think of it like a healthy smoothie, but for your hair follicles.
5. tgin Miracle Repair Strengthening Shampoo
This list of best shampoos for gray hair in 2023 is leaning towards synthetic shampoos so far, so let’s even things out. tgin Miracle Repair Strengthening Shampoo is a well crafted, excellently balanced shampoo suitable for all hair types, including coily or curly hair. Both natural and bleached gray hair can benefit from the hefty dose of hydration this shampoo provides, which it does by including a variety of sugar containing ingredients such as honey, cane sugar, and sugar maple extract.
Don’t worry, this won’t make your hair sticky, as the sugars are adsorbed onto the surface of the hair strands. Sugars pull water out of the very air itself, so you’re constantly provided with a self-replenishing source of moisture. However, if there isn’t any moisture in the air, this can backfire, and the water will be drawn out of your hair instead. So if you live somewhere with very low humidity, you probably want to steer clear of this and other sugar shampoos.
In addition to the excellent hydrating properties of this shampoo, it helps restore health to your hair follicles, allowing you to grow healthier hair. Papaya, acai, bilberry, orange, and other fruit extracts make sure that your scalp has all the nutrients it needs to stay healthy and create stronger, shinier hair. Lastly, a dose of castor oil replaces any lost natural oils and smooths the hair surface.
6. Davines LOVE Smoothing Shampoo
Davines LOVE is the first smoothing shampoo on our list. Smoothing shampoos work by filling in the damaged external layer of the hair strand, which is perfect for those of us with bleached hair. The bleaching process causes microscopic cracks in the surface of the hair, leaving it rough and dull. Smoothing shampoos fill in these cracks, so your hair has a uniform surface. It’s similar to giving wood a coat of natural varnish, and improves color and shine. This prevents frizz, thickens the hair shaft, and gives a silky feel to your hair.
Davines LOVE shampoo uses a number of substances to achieve this effect, including amodimethicone/silsesquioxane copolymer, better known as a silicone. People with curly or coily hair are often advised to steer clear of silicones, as they cause a waterproof coating to form on the hair. This coating can only be removed using a strong shampoo containing detergent such as sodium laureth sulfate, which runs the risk of causing frizz and breakages in curly or coily hair. While this is usually a serious downside, for hair that’s already been damaged by the bleaching process, a protective coating is exactly what it needs.
Davines LOVE shampoo utilizes silicones, guar gum extract, and polyquaternium-7, all of which work together to create a thick, strong, smooth barrier over damaged hair. However, LOVE doesn’t contain any harsh detergents, which means that these protective coatings can build up over time. Your hair may need the occasional cleanse in order to remove buildup, followed by a hair mask to replace lost hydration.
The shampoo itself has a wonderfully creamy texture, but an incredibly strong smell. If you’re not a fan of strong scented bath and shower products, you’ll want to skip this one. If you enjoy being enveloped in the smell of lavender detergent, it’s perfect for you. Although the shampoo experience itself may not be much to write home about, it does do an absolutely amazing job at restoring damaged hair.
7. R+Co BLEU Ingenious Thickening Shampoo
If you’ve got damaged hair but don’t want to use silicones, give R+Co BLEU Ingenious Thickening Shampoo a try. While this shampoo does contain some compounds that can build up over time, Ingenious Thickening Shampoo relies more on vegetable proteins to fill in damaged areas of the hair strand than it does film-forming ingredients.
Hydrolyzed protein is often added to thickening or repairing shampoos, as the small molecules of the protein bond to damaged hair and fill in small cracks or divots. If you imagine your hair as a wall, hydrolyzed protein is the putty you use to repair holes while silicones are more a protective coat of paint. Using silicones will help fill in small damaged areas, but for severe damage, you’re probably going to need hydrolyzed protein.
If you have naturally gray hair, chances are that you’re a little more seasoned than people who bleach their hair gray. Ingenious Thickening Shampoo is just as beneficial for mature hair as it is for bleached hair as it adds volume and thickness to hair that might be thinning with age. If you have naturally thick hair, you don’t have much need for a thickening shampoo, so you may want to try another product on this list.
The shampoo lathers well, and has a pleasant unisex fragrance. It’s a little on the expensive side, but you don’t need much of this product to get a head of foam, and thickening shampoos should only be used once a week or so to prevent buildup. Overall, this is a great addition to your haircare routine if you have thin or damaged hair.
8. Olaplex No.4P Blonde Enhancer Toning Shampoo
Olaplex has really been through the wringer over the past few years. They released their first product in 2014, which was an instant hit with salons. Olaplex’s patented bond repair system repaired damaged hair by causing the amino acids inside to re-link together, mending small cracks and repairing chemical damage. This drastically improved the strength of color-treated and bleached hair.
Although Olaplex was a salon favorite for years, in 2022 the EU banned the use of lilial, an ingredient in No.4’s sister product, Olaplex No.3, citing recent studies showing an increased risk of infertility associated with lilial exposure. While Olaplex No.4 and Olaplex No.4P never contained lilial, because another Olaplex product had used a dangerous chemical, a lot of customers were put off the Olaplex line entirely. It didn’t matter that the chemical wasn’t known to be dangerous at the time.
Olaplex removed lilial from their products as soon as its harmful effects were proven, and to all appearances had no idea that one of the ingredients in their product could be dangerous. No.4 contains no sulfates or parabens, and is phosphate and phthalate free, suggesting that Olaplex does try to keep potentially damaging chemicals out of their products. Olaplex also removed lilial before the ban came into effect, so No.4 and No.4P are slowly recovering the coveted reputation for Olaplex that they once held.
No.4P is the purple version of No.4, designed specifically for bleached hair. You don’t need to have bleached your hair, though, in order to gain the benefits of this shampoo. The bond repair system works on all kinds of damage, including UV, chemical, and environmental. The miracles Olaplex No.4P can do on damaged hair as well as the company’s newfound commitment to using healthy ingredients are the reasons that we overcame our reservations and placed this as the final entry on our top 8 best shampoos for gray hair.
Frequently asked questions
Why do we go gray?
As we age, some of the cells in the hair follicle stop producing melanin, the pigment that gives our hair its color. How soon the melanin-producing cells stop producing pigment seems to come down to stress and genetics. If your parents went gray early on, chances are you’ll be rocking silver locks before you’re thirty as well. Graying can also be triggered by periods of intense stress, which makes us wonder why we aren’t seeing more gray hair in the general population after the past few years we’ve had.
Can you reverse the graying process?
It used to be thought that the pigment cells in your hair follicles died off completely, but recent research is showing that some of them may just become dormant. If the cells are still alive, it might be possible to turn melanin production back on, reversing the graying process. Hurry up with the cure for graying hair, please! While gray hair can certainly look good, it would be nice to have a choice in the matter. Currently no effective treatment for reversing graying hair is available.
What is a purple shampoo?
Purple shampoos have gained notoriety on certain social media sites due to claims of it dying hair purple or bleaching it bone white. Sorry to disappoint, but neither of these things happen when you use purple shampoo, no matter how much you use. Purple shampoos do contain some purple pigment, but they’re not going to turn your hair purple.
Purple shampoo exists to remove unwanted yellow tones from gray hair. If your gray hair naturally has a slight yellow tone, it may be that your hair follicles are still producing a smidge of melanin, or perhaps your hair wasn’t bleached as dark as it could have been. If you find your hair is taking on a more yellow appearance as it grows, it’s probably accumulating pigment from your haircare products, shampoos, air pollution, or even your hair accessories. Hair stains surprisingly easily!
Nothing’s wrong with having a warm gray tone to your hair, and it will complement some skin tones excellently. If your skin is better flattered by a cool gray, or you want to even out the color, you might want to try a purple shampoo.
How does purple shampoo work?
If you imagine each color of the rainbow as a person, and then have those people stand in a circle, each color is going to have another color directly opposite it. That color is the complementary color, and in some situations, they can cancel each other out. Purple is the complementary color to yellow, so if a hair strand contains both a small amount of purple dye and a hint of yellow, the two cancel each other out, and the hair appears gray.
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