You have a secret: some of your teeth aren’t 100% natural. Thanks to your dentist’s color-matching skills, your dental bonding blends right in. The only people who know about your dental restoration are the people you choose to tell.
Lately, however, the bonding material has been looking a bit worse for wear. Your picture-perfect smile is slowly starting to show too many different shades of white. Would a teeth whitening treatment eliminate dental (and bonding!) stains to help round out your look?
The answer to that might be more complicated than you would expect. Keep reading to learn how you can polish your dental bonding.
What Causes Dental Staining?
Before discussing your options, it’s important to understand how staining works. Different substances have varying levels of porosity. High porosity materials are more absorbent, so they “absorb” the pigments in food and drinks more easily. Nonporous materials are denser or sealed in some way, so pigments tend to sit on the surface instead, where they’re much easier to wipe clean.
Dental bonding is nonporous, while your natural tooth enamel has to have some absorbency so it can benefit from essential nutrients like calcium. This does mean that your bonding will tarnish at a slower rate, but your natural teeth won’t be able to keep up, and you might start to see a shade difference between the two.
Can Dental Bonding be Whitened?
Not exactly. The problem is that teeth whitening treatments are designed specifically for, well, teeth. Hydrogen peroxide and carbamide peroxide – the main ingredients in most whitening agents – are excellent at sinking through enamel pores to eliminate stains. They’re not so great, unfortunately, at penetrating the surface of dental bonding.
How Can I Achieve a Consistent Smile?
That doesn’t mean that there’s no hope for achieving a consistent smile! Your dentist has your aesthetic needs covered. They might be able to polish staining pigments off your dental bonding during a cleaning, and if that doesn’t do the trick, they can always repair or replace the composite material.
Another, more out-of-the-box solution would be to ask them about porcelain veneers. These thin, tooth-like facades can conceal your bonding and come with some other added benefits (like enamel protection), so it could be worth looking into. No matter which option you and your dentist decide is best, they have your back; don’t hesitate to contact them for cosmetic dental assistance!
About the Practice
Dr. Farshad Bakhtyari (Dr. B) and Dr. Pooyan Refahi are highly experienced dentists with exceptional training in many fields of dentistry. Cosmetic dentistry is one of Dr. B’s specialties; if you want to even out the color of your smile and refresh your dental bonding, he has the perfect aesthetic touch for the job! To contact Dr. B and Dr. Refahi’s office, call 703-860-8860.