The Best Root Touch-Up You’ve Never Heard Of

Tiny powder puff. Major life upgrade.

Switching gears this week for an old-school beauty product post. One of the many unexpectedly challenging parts of facelift recovery is the grey root situation. I normally have to cover my roots every two to three weeks, and most surgeons recommend stopping hair color at least one week before surgery, sometimes two weeks. Then you have to wait another four to six weeks afterward before coloring again.

So yes. Potentially six to eight straight weeks of grey root buildup and a growing zebra stripe down the middle of your head.

To be extra safe, because I am wildly paranoid and wanted to risk absolutely nothing, I stopped coloring my hair two weeks before surgery and waited a full eight weeks post-op to start again. Ten straight weeks of grey roots was in stark contrast to my freshly lifted face. Thank God for chic vintage headscarves, Yankee baseball caps, and a great (yet gentle) root touch-up product.

During this incredibly glamorous chapter of my life (photos follow down below), I became mildly psychotic about finding a good root cover product and basically ordered every option I could find.

Prior to surgery, I had been using the Oribe root touch up spray that everyone loves and recommends. Walk into any beauty store and it’s treated like a root touch-up gift from God. I genuinely do not understand the hype. It only comes in two shades, and I personally find aerosol root sprays messy, inaccurate, and annoying to apply. Rita Hazan’s root touch-up spray is also a cult favorite, and I feel exactly the same way about that one too. No bueno.

I wanted something gentle, easy to control, and honestly something that matched my roots better. More importantly, I wanted something I could apply with precision around my incision lines without feeling like I was spray painting my scalp.

Then I found the holy grail. And what I find especially interesting is that after trying roughly ten different products, this one was on absolutely nobody’s “best of” lists. InStyle recently “tested” root cover products and somehow this wasn’t included anywhere. I suspect because it doesn’t advertise with them? This exact dynamic is exactly why traditional beauty media is slowly dying. Anyway. I digress.

Then I came across this incredibly magical little product. And yes, post-op photos ahead.