Does the color of the hair have any effect on hair transplant results?
Yes. The most important element of hair color is how much it contrasts with the scalp. When the scalp is darker in color, this is almost always advantageous, especially with patients with dark hair, because there will be less color contrast between the scalp and the hair color. For patients with blond hair, there is very little issue with color contrast and usually very nice results can be achieved, plus with blond and lighter color hair like red hair the appearance of some scalp showing through the hair is not as noticeable. Finally, salt and pepper color hair can give a fairly nice result with slightly larger grafts, such as three to four hair grafts except along the hair line, because the salt and pepper colored hair grafts have some gray as well as dark hair so a three or four hair graft will have typically two gray and two black hairs giving the appearance of two separate grafts.Posted by Jeffrey S. Epstein, MD, FACS