“My skin looks washed out and paler.”

Even if you start to gray in your twenties or thirties, the absence of color in your hair has a cooling effect on your complexion. Remember your pigment facts, color is actually in the cortex of the hair; we perceive color because the pigment shines through. This reflective quality affects your skintone, as well. And it isn't always a good thing. Dark-colored hair can play up the shadows in your face, causing you to appear older. Light-colored hair can hype the yellow tone in your skin, and you can look sallower. But no-color hair shows the real you; the real skintone color. You may not have seen it before; you may not like it now. Suddenly, you're paler, ruddier, sallower, or, yes, even grayer than you ever knew.

For women in their 40's and beyond, the fade-out effect may have more to do with a natural thinning of skin. It loses density; the cushiony little layers flatten out, and the skin becomes a little less opaque. A thinner skin reveals veins and shadows that weren't noticeable when you were younger. You may think your skin looks a bit paler, a bit grayer, when it's really only more transparent. Like your hair.

As you start to lose collagen, the face is less defined by curves and highlights. Light plays with these areas, but as they flatten out, the face can appear lifeless. It’s not necessarily the color of your skin that is fading, it’s the flattening that makes it look paler.