So, uh, why all the panic about plucking gray hair? Well, says Rez, the reason people think more grays are summoned as soon as you pluck a single strand is because it looks and feels more noticeable on your scalp. “Being shorter, having a more wiry texture and white in color—the new growth will be poking out and more noticeable as it regrows,” he explains.
Essentially, gray hair actually has a different texture than 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, coarse 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.