My gray hair strands gradually took over, until I was using at home hair color or touching up my roots every three weeks. And I noticed some damage to my hair from the coloring. It was switch to expensive salon or go gray and go gray won. It took awhile, I switched from a darker brown gradually to ash blonde, and used a temporary rinse to blend out the roots. By going lighter I never had the “skunk stripe” so it was just a matter of time. A really short hair cut toward the end helped.