"I want to grow my color out."

Please. If you color your hair, and you want to let it grow out, PLEASE listen to your hairdresser. I have a client, I've had her for quite a while, now. She came to me back in the summertime, lamenting about continually coloring her hair. The front of her hair is white, and it gets progressively grayer towards the back of her head (to the nape). She's been coloring her hair for YEARS (she's mid-late 40's, at best) and is sick of the expense. So, we talked about finding a solution to help her along. Which I came up with, along with some advice from the fabulous Beth Minardi. The advice was this: highlight tiny sections around her face, and throughout the top. Let them develop until the reach the pale yellow color of the inside of a banana. Rinse, then apply a demi permanent color over the top, in a silvery shade, to help the highlights to blend with the graying hair. Which I did, back in November. She came in yesterday...I was excited because I was under the false assumption that she was letting it grow out, which would give me more white to work with, and, ultimately, less colored hair to deal with, since I would be cutting more off. I had cut her boyfriend's hair the week before, and he had passed comments along about how her hair feels dry, the ends are dark. Which should have gotten me thinking. Not so much. My client had purchased some of the 28-day type of hair color to cover up her regrowth. While she thought she was doing the right thing, really, she wasn't. And this is why: When you color your hair, (and I thought I drilled this through her head, apparently not), even if it's the 28 day kind, and you smush the color through to the ends of your hair, no matter how light the color is, the darker color WILL GET PROGRESSIVELY DARKER. Also, when you have multiple chemicals on your hair shaft, say permanent color, then highlight to lift the color out, then put demi permanent color over the top of it, then put more applications of a semi permanent color over the top of THAT mess, your hair will feel DRY. This is because the cuticle is so blown wide open that the hair feels dry to the touch. In reality, it's frayed, like a beat up pair of cut off shorts. So, I very patiently explained, repeatedly, to my client, that if you truly want the color to grow out, you can no longer color your hair at home. To spend the money to have me remove what I can, safely, to start this process, and then to go buy a box of hair color and cover it up, completely defeats the purpose of removing the color in the first place. And, it's expensive. It's also a waste of money to have me remove the color to have you (the client) only put it back a month or so later because you can't stand the white. It's a choice you have to make. If you want to step away from hair color, you must step away from ALL OF IT, only having me, your colorist, remove more of the color from time to time. You CAN NOT keep coloring your hair over at home. She decided to let me highlight her hair, much more heavily this time, as well as cut 4 inches off her basic length, then layer it. After the highlight was over, and I was running my fingers through her hair while blow drying it, damn little broke off in my hands...a GOOD sign...I cut the majority of the damage out. Now, if she can only step away from the boxes of hair color long enough to let her hair grow out!!!