High Porosity Issue

[Redstylist71]

Good morning from FREEZING St Louis area!!! We had our 1st full snow storm 2 days ago...yuk lol. Anyway, I am in dire need of help, like almost all of us asking questions 😂. I am a licensed (non practicing) cosmetologist. When I was going to school one of the areas I was hoping to master was color, but as most cosmetologist learn, we get very basic knowledge of color in school. And unfortunately my instructors couldn't help me with my personal hair issue but I am hoping someone on here can help me. I am 47 and my mom found my 1st gray hair when I was 9 (everyone in my family gets gray hair early). Currently I am about 70% gray from the middle of the back of my head to the front of my hair line and 30% gray from middle of the back of my head to nape of my neck. My hair is thick & grows like a weed. My base hair color is dark brown & white/gray. I am retired Air Force after 24+ years and used to keep my hair short. When my roots started getting grayer I would dye them dark brown but I noticed my ends started getting darker & darker. Luckily because my hair grows crazy fast, when I touched up my roots (every 2 weeks), I was getting my short hair cut so my dark ends typically got cut off. Now that I am retired I have grew my hair out. However, when I touch up ONLY my roots and rinse out the color the rest of my hair catches the color and turns black. While in cosmetology school I asked my instructors what would stop this and they told me to use a porosity spray (to even my porosity all over my hair) before touching up my roots. I tried that and my ends actually got darker! Same issue with root filler. Then my instructor said said to put  conditioner on my non-root areas so the color would slide off my hair. That worked but it is such a hassle. I have to be careful because I ca'. Because my hair grows do fast I have to do a touch up every 2 weeks. It is a long process because of the conditioner step. I have to be careful to not get it too close to roots. A few months ago I started dying my hair black because I don't have to worry about my porous hair catching color. I can color just my roots or my entire head if I am being lazy and it doesn't matter. I am not a fan of the black. Plus mature women (better than saying old 😂) should lighten their hair not go darker. With all that being said I have 2 questions: 1) is there an easier & less time consuming way to prevent my hair from catching color while rinsing out the dye? and 2) what color(s) should I get (highlight/lowlights/full color/etc) so I can stop having to touch up roots so often? I don't want to have gray hair right now. Help me please 🙏!

My profile pic is my hair now. 1st attached picture is my roots, the other 3 were pictures are colors I was thinking about getting done by a colorist so I could extend my time for root touchups. Thoughts?

[Janineb]

Can you explain the process you’re using to put the conditioner on the ends? I’m really not understanding why it adds so much time. When I don’t want the colour to get on to my ends from a root touch up, I put the colour on the roots first, then as I’m waiting for it to process I slap on a bunch of conditioner roughly where I want it and work it in for a couple of minutes. It doesn’t take any extra time really as it’s during time I can’t do anyth8ng other than wait anyway.

As for the colours, tricky really. Going lighter than what you have naturally, when you’re greying, instead of as dark/darker would make the roots more bearable. I’m just showing my first greys now at 45 (my family go grey young too, so it’s been a shock for me to not go grey until now!) and my plan is to keep my hair on the lighter side now, though i use unnatural colours anyway so it’s not quite the same. Highlights are tricky over long periods because the hair at the bottom will gradually get lighter and lighter as it’s tough to redo them in the same spot on the roots, so normally they just add new ones. Or at least, that’s what they used to do, it might have changed now. So it really depends on if you’re happy with it being lighter or not.