Is there any weight behind the commonly held claim? We consulted celebrity colorist and Redken brand ambassador Matt Rez to separate fact from fiction. Essentially, gray hair actually has a different texture from the rest of your pigmented strands as it tends to be a bit more coarse (when the follicle produces less melanin, it tends to produce less sebum as well and results in a drier, coarser hair). So when the hair does regrow in the same spot, it’ll stand out a bit more than its neighbors. This, of course, doesn’t give you permission to pluck every gray you lay eyes on. Even if you remove the hair from the follicle, the new one will grow back gray—it’s an internal process that happens when your pigment-producing cells start to deteriorate, so removing the actual strand does next to nothing. Plus, pulling out hairs can cause trauma to the follicle; it may even become damaged and die if you do it over and over again—once that happens, the hair will never be able to grow back.
