My Hair Journey Update + Color Analysis: What 5 Months and My Color Season Taught Me

Can a daily supplement actually change thinning hair — and should a professional color analysis change the way you get dressed? I tested both at the same time. Five months of a women's hair-growth formula gave me real answers about what works (and what does not), and a two-hour color draping session told me whether five decades of wardrobe instinct had steered me right or led me astray.

The supplement question is the one I hear constantly in DMs: "does anything actually work, or is it a waste of money?" The color question is newer — it started flooding the comments once my silver grew in and viewers kept asking what season I am. Below is the honest breakdown of both, side by side, so you can decide whether either one belongs in your routine.

A women's hair-growth supplement formulated for hormonal thinning delivered visible density and less shedding by month four to five — but only with daily consistency and realistic expectations. A professional color analysis placed me in the Summer season, which means cool, soft tones flatter my silver hair most, though I treat the palette as a guide, never a rule book.

Key takeaways

1. Hair supplements need three to six months because they work with your growth cycle, not against it — results build gradually, not overnight.
2. Less shedding appeared first, followed by denser, healthier-feeling hair around months four and five.
3. Supplements support hair health, not cure hair loss. Significant thinning deserves a doctor's visit to rule out thyroid, iron, or hormonal causes before you spend on bottles.
4. A professional color analysis assigns you a season — Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter — based on which undertones brighten your face and which dull it.
5. Going gray shifts your undertone cooler and lower in contrast, so the warm palette that worked at 35 can fight you after silver arrives.
6. Your season is a set of pillars, not a prison. Use it to stock the closet and the makeup bag, then color outside the lines whenever confidence says so.

What did five months on a hair-growth supplement actually change?

Going silver is beautiful, but it takes real work — frizz management, moisture layering, keeping the texture from reading as straw. On top of that, two stressful years took a visible toll, especially around my temples and parting, where thinning was starting to show. I picked a daily women's hair-growth supplement formulated for women forty-five and over — one with saw palmetto, marine collagen, ashwagandha, and biotin — and my mom joined me so we could compare notes across two different hair types.

Here is what I saw, month by month: the first eight weeks felt like nothing — no thicker, no thinner, just taking a capsule every morning. By month three I noticed less hair circling the shower drain, which was the first signal anything was happening beneath the surface. By month four to five the density shift became obvious: my ponytail felt fuller, the thinning patch at my temples was less visible, and my mom reported similar shedding reduction on her finer, straighter hair.

Why does it take so long? Scalp hair grows about half an inch a month and each strand follows a growth cycle — growing phase, resting phase, shedding phase — that a supplement can support but cannot accelerate. You are feeding the next generation of hairs, not the ones already visible. Anyone who promises overnight results is selling you something other than science.

How do you choose a hair supplement that actually works?

The supplement shelf is overwhelming, so here is how I narrowed it down — and what I would tell my best friend before she spends a penny.

1. Talk to your doctor first if your thinning is sudden, patchy, or concentrated at the crown. Supplements address nutritional support; they do not treat thyroid dysfunction, alopecia areata, or iron-deficiency anaemia.
2. Look for formulations targeted at your age bracket. Hormonal hair thinning after forty differs from the diffuse shedding a twenty-five-year-old might experience, so a generic biotin gummy may not address the right pathways.
3. Read the active panel, not the front label. Saw palmetto, marine collagen, ashwagandha, curcumin, and biotin are the ingredients most commonly studied for hormonal hair support. If the label leads with a proprietary blend and no milligram counts, move on.
4. Commit to the timeline. Three months is the minimum trial; six months gives you a full growth-cycle answer. Stopping at week five because "nothing happened" is like pulling a seed out of the ground to see whether it grew.
5. Track with photographs, not feelings. Take a top-down photo of your part in the same bathroom light on the first of every month. Your eye adjusts daily and misses gradual change; a side-by-side at month five does not.

What is a professional color analysis — and is it worth the money?

A professional color analysis, or seasonal draping, is a two-to-three-hour session where a trained consultant holds fabric swatches near your bare, makeup-free face — you arrive in a white top so nothing competes — and studies which undertones brighten your skin, hair, and eyes and which cast shadows. You are then placed into one of four seasonal families: Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter, with some systems subdividing further into warm, cool, light, deep, soft, or clear variants.

You leave with a physical swatch book — a little booklet of colour chips in your season — that you can take into your closet and into the fitting room. Think of it as a cheat sheet: instead of guessing whether that navy reads right or that coral washes you out, you hold the swatch next to it and know.

Is it worth it? I think so, especially for women navigating the gray transition. Going silver changes your facial contrast and undertone in ways most of us do not realize until someone points them out. Spending a hundred to two hundred dollars once to stop wasting money on clothes and makeup that quietly fight your colouring feels like the definition of a good investment.

What did my Summer season diagnosis actually reveal?

My consultant placed me squarely in Summer — the cool, soft, muted quadrant. Here is what that means in practice: my silver hair reads as a cool neutral, my skin leans cool pink, and high-contrast, saturated shades overwhelm my features rather than complementing them. The draping showed it in real time: a bright orange swatch cast a yellow shadow under my jaw, while a dusty rose swatch made my face look lit from within.

A few results surprised me. I was told that stark black and pure white are not my strongest neutrals — that navy and cream do the same job without the harshness. I was also told bright yellow pulls my skin sallow, even though I have loved yellow clothing for years. Here is the thing: I acknowledged the information, filed it, and kept every piece I love in those shades. The analysis is a compass, and I am still the one steering.

How does going gray change your color season?

This is the question almost nobody asks before they ditch the dye — and it explains why so many women feel like their entire wardrobe "stopped working" halfway through the transition. Here is what actually happens: pigmented hair contributes warmth, depth, and contrast to your overall colouring. When that pigment leaves and silver arrives, your personal contrast drops and your undertone shifts cooler. A woman who was a warm Autumn with chestnut hair may drift toward a soft Summer once silver dominates. It does not happen overnight — it tracks the percentage of gray versus dyed hair — but by the time you are fully silver, the palette that once popped may now wash you out.

The same principle applies to makeup. Warm brown eyeshadow that added definition against dark hair can read muddy against silver. A nude-beige lip that balanced a warm complexion looks pale and lifeless once the warm frame is gone. The fix is not more makeup — it is cooler-toned makeup.

• Lips: trade warm nudes and brick reds for rosy, berry, and plum tones — a berry-leaning lipstick or a velvet cream lipstick in a cool mauve anchors the face beautifully against silver hair.
• Eyes: shift from warm browns and golds to cool grays, soft purples, lavender, and taupe — try the Cabana eyeshadow palette or the Rewrite the Rules palette for a cool, smoky range.
• Cheeks: move from warm peach or terracotta to soft pink, cool apricot, or berry — our lip and cheek cream doubles as a cool-toned flush.
• Brows: if your brows are going gray too, a warm brown pencil looks drawn on. Switch to a cool taupe or soft gray with a fine-tip brow pencil and set with brow gel.

What are the most common mistakes with supplements and color analysis?

1. Quitting a supplement before three months. The growth cycle has not completed a single rotation, so you are judging silence, not failure.
2. Mega-dosing biotin alone. Biotin supports keratin production, but without co-factors like saw palmetto and collagen the results are marginal for hormonal thinning.
3. Skipping the doctor. Supplements cannot compensate for untreated thyroid, iron, or hormonal issues — those need a blood panel, not a capsule.
4. Taking your color analysis results as law. The swatch book is a shortcut, not a sentence. It tells you what flatters effortlessly; it does not forbid what flatters with confidence.
5. Ignoring makeup after the color analysis. Your wardrobe and your makeup bag are one system — shifting your closet cool while keeping warm makeup creates a mismatch the camera sees even when the mirror does not.
6. Assuming your old season still applies after going gray. Losing pigmented hair changes your contrast and undertone, so a pre-silver season assignment may need updating.
7. Wearing only your "safe" colours. The analysis tells you what pops without effort, but a monochromatic closet built entirely inside the swatch book reads as timid. Wear the dusty rose and then throw on a bold red when you feel like it.
8. Judging results against someone else's timeline. Two women on the same supplement will see results at different speeds because genetics, stress, diet, and hormonal profile all play a role.

How do you build a gray-hair wardrobe around your season?

Start with five neutral pieces in your season's best neutrals — not black-and-white defaults, but the specific neutrals the draping said brighten your face. For a Summer, that means navy, cream, and soft gray rather than jet black and stark white. Those five pieces rotate with everything, so you are never standing in front of the closet at six in the morning wondering what "goes."

Next, add two or three accent tops or scarves in your season's accent range. For me, that is dusty pink, berry, and soft blue. Accent pieces near the face are where your season does the most work — a dusty-rose blouse reads completely different from a dusty-rose shoe. If you only follow the palette in one zone, make it the neckline up.

Finally, test before you purge. Lay the swatch book on a shelf in your closet and hold suspect pieces against it for a week. You will find that some "wrong" colours actually work because the fabric, the texture, or the styling breaks the rules in a way the draping cannot predict. Others — usually the warm, muted earth tones — will look obviously off once you have the comparison. Donate those first, replace slowly, and your closet shifts without the panic of a one-weekend overhaul.

What else supports healthy hair alongside a supplement?

A supplement feeds the follicle from the inside, but what happens on the outside matters just as much. Think of it as a two-front approach: internal nutrition plus external protection.

1. Moisture layering. Gray hair lacks the pigment that once sealed moisture into the strand, so it dries out faster. A weekly deep-conditioning mask, a daily leave-in on the mid-lengths and ends, and an overnight oil treatment when it feels like straw give it the hydration its structure no longer holds on its own.
2. Heat reduction. Every pass of a flat iron lifts the cuticle and evaporates moisture. Air-dry when you can, use a heat protectant when you cannot, and cap the temperature at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for fine or fragile hair.
3. Scalp care. A clean, healthy scalp is where every new hair starts. A weekly scalp scrub or a gentle exfoliating treatment clears the buildup that blocks follicles and lets the supplement's nutrients actually reach the growth zone.
4. Purple or violet shampoo. White and silver hair yellows from hard water, sun, heat, and product buildup. A pigmented purple shampoo once or twice a week neutralises that brass. Judge the bottle on pigment strength, not price. Read more in our guide to why gray hair frizzes and how to fix it.
5. Gentle detangling. Coarse, wiry gray hair snaps when you rip a brush through it wet. Use a wide-tooth comb or a wet-detangling brush from the ends up, never roots-down, and detangle on conditioned hair, never dry.

The bottom line

A hair supplement is not magic — it is patience in capsule form. Give it three to six consistent months, track your progress with photographs, and pair it with moisture, scalp care, and lower heat to give the new growth its best chance. A professional color analysis is not a cage — it is the most useful two hundred dollars you will spend on your appearance if you are navigating the gray transition, because it replaces guesswork with a swatch book and stops you buying clothes and makeup that quietly fight your colouring. Use the season as your home base and your confidence as your compass, and you will land somewhere that looks intentional instead of accidental.

Ready to shift your makeup cooler to match your silver? Start with our lipstick collection for berry and plum tones, explore the eyeshadow collection for cool purples and soft grays, or browse all makeup to build your full cool-toned kit.

Frequently asked questions

How long do hair supplements take to show results?

Most women notice less shedding within the first two to three months and visible density improvements by months four to five. Hair grows about half an inch a month and follows a growth cycle with active, resting, and shedding phases, so a supplement supports the next generation of strands rather than the ones already visible. Give any formula a minimum of three months and ideally six before judging.

Can a supplement reverse hair loss after menopause?

Supplements support hair health and can reduce hormonally driven thinning, but they do not reverse hair loss caused by medical conditions like thyroid dysfunction, alopecia areata, or severe iron deficiency. If your thinning is sudden, patchy, or concentrated at the crown, see a doctor for a blood panel before spending on supplements. A targeted formula with saw palmetto, marine collagen, and ashwagandha addresses the hormonal pathways most relevant to menopausal hair changes.

What happens if I stop taking a hair supplement?

The nutritional support stops, and over several months your hair may gradually return to its pre-supplement baseline. Think of it like exercise: the benefits last as long as the habit does. If you stop and notice increased shedding or thinning resuming, that is a sign the supplement was doing its job and worth continuing.

How much does a professional color analysis cost?

Sessions typically run between one hundred and three hundred dollars depending on your city and the consultant's system. Most take two to three hours and include a physical swatch book you keep. Nikol used House of Colour, but there are several reputable systems. The cost is a one-time investment — your season does not change unless your colouring shifts significantly, which going gray qualifies as.

Does your color season change when you go gray?

It can. Pigmented hair contributes warmth, depth, and contrast to your overall colouring, and when silver replaces it, your undertone shifts cooler and your contrast drops. A woman who was a warm Autumn with dark hair may drift toward a soft Summer once silver dominates. If your wardrobe and makeup feel like they stopped working after going gray, a fresh analysis is worth the investment.

What is the difference between the four color seasons?

Spring is warm and clear, with best colours like peach, coral, and golden yellow. Summer is cool and soft, favouring dusty pink, berry, lavender, and plum. Autumn is warm and muted, leaning into terracotta, rust, teal, and mustard. Winter is cool and clear, strongest in fuchsia, emerald, jewel tones, and true red. Each season also has distinct best neutrals — navy and cream for Summer versus black and white for Winter, for example.

What makeup colours work best with silver hair?

Cool-toned shades almost always outperform warm ones once silver dominates. For lips, think berry, plum, rosy pink, and cool mauve rather than warm nudes and brick reds. For eyes, shift from warm browns and golds to cool grays, soft purples, lavender, and taupe. For cheeks, replace warm peach with soft pink or cool apricot. The key principle is that silver hair removes warmth from the frame, so your makeup needs to supply cool balance rather than more warmth.

Is biotin enough on its own for hair growth?

Biotin supports keratin production, which is one piece of the puzzle, but on its own it delivers marginal results for hormonal thinning. A targeted formula combines biotin with saw palmetto (which addresses the hormone DHT linked to follicle miniaturisation), marine collagen (which supports the dermal layer around the follicle), and adaptogens like ashwagandha (which manage the cortisol spikes that trigger shedding). The combination addresses multiple pathways, which is why single-ingredient mega-doses rarely deliver the same outcome.

Can I do a color analysis myself at home?

You can try an informal version by draping fabric scraps near your bare face in natural daylight and observing whether your skin looks brighter or more shadowed, but a trained consultant catches subtleties most people miss — especially the difference between cool and warm undertones in a similar shade. A professional session is more reliable, and if you are spending money on a wardrobe refresh anyway, the analysis pays for itself in avoided mistakes.

Should I redo my color analysis after my gray transition is complete?

Yes, if your original analysis was done while you still had mostly dyed or pigmented hair. Your season is determined by the interaction of your skin, eyes, and hair — and replacing warm or dark hair with silver can shift you into a different seasonal family or a different variant within the same family. A fresh draping once you are fully silver gives you the most accurate swatch book for the colouring you actually live in now.