This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.
It’s not just men—women experience hair loss too. My hair has been slowly thinning for years. During perimenopause, I would lose handfuls of strands down the drain. My hair loss peaked during that time; according to a recent study, more than 50 percent of women will experience female-pattern hair loss during menopause itself. Now that I’m postmenopause, I also have lots of gray, especially at my temples and hairline.
Luckily, I have a secret weapon for making my hair look fuller, hiding my gray, and stretching the time between when I have to apply color: temporary root concealer. It’s fast, convenient, and affordable, and it can work like a charm for people with mild age-related hair thinning (men too!). It darkens gray hairs and also fills in small gaps on your scalp with color, making it look as if you have a little more hair than you do. There are a lot of options out there these days, from root-concealing sprays to powders and even crayons.
I’ve tried a bunch that have all been pretty good. Madison Reed’s popular Root Touch Up Powder resembles eye shadow and comes in six shades that are rainproof and sweatproof; a package lasts for months. Toppik Fill Me In Hairline Filler looks like mascara and comes with a doe-foot tip for dabbing color into sparse areas along the hairline, a spoolie wand to build hair strokes, and a sponge for blending. And I recently tried cult favorite Color Wow Root Cover Up, the go-to root concealer for Kim Sclafani, a hair-color expert at the Color Cafe Hair Studio in Connecticut. She tells me she is partial to it because it is buildable, stays put, and washes out easily. The powder formula comes with a clever two-sided brush to quickly touch up small areas like the temples, hairline, and parts.
With most of these products, a little goes a long way. Patience, good lighting, and a magnifying mirror are key. If you go for a spray, just know that they can be trickier to control than powders—Sclafani recommends using an old toothbrush or a mascara wand to apply the product.
I’ve had to experiment to find the right color, and occasionally I use two different shades for a more seamless look. Amanda Gadway, a color expert and spokesperson for Boldify Hairline Powder, says that if you’re between two shades, opt for the darker one since hair is naturally darker at the root. “If there’s too big a difference between consecutive shades, consider ordering both the light and the dark and mixing them to create a custom color, applying the darker shade first and then adjusting with the lighter shade as needed,” she says.
Thinning hair can do a number on your self-esteem, so it helps to have a trick up your sleeve to disguise it. Root concealer won’t cut it for more severe hair loss, but it can make a real difference if you need to hide sparse areas here and there. A simple confidence booster? I’ll take it.
