Everybody wants to have a beautiful smile. It is, in fact, one of the most sought services that dentistry can provide. There are many people who, for better or for worse, really only endure the general teeth cleaning procedures because they want their smiles to be as attractive as humanly possible. Often times, the small, insignificant things like oral hygiene, heart health, and the staving of gum disease are actually just perks to some patients. In spite of this and regardless of how much one may value the aesthetic beauty of his or her own smile, bleaching is a process not without its disadvantages. People may want to bleach their teeth solely to improve the looks of their smiles, but many are unaware of what kinds of disadvantages there are to bleaching or what pitfalls exist along the way that could, at the very least, cost them more money and, at the very worst, not improve their smiles.
Shortcomings of Whitening Products
No matter which way you slice it, bleaching simply isn’t a permanent process. Some invest in the bleaching process under the misconception that their teeth will remain more or less pearly after one bleaching procedure, but this is in no way the case, lest ye be so mislead by commonly erroneous, preconceived notions. Most fundamentally, it is the truth that stained teeth bleach well in general, but typically this is the case for specifically teeth whose stains are of a yellowish hue whereas teeth that are stained with a graying or browning of the enamel respond rather poorly to whitening products and processes.
The chemicals that are used to whiten teeth, in fact, are unable to alter the color of crowns, fillings, or bonding materials for that matter. Assuming you apply whitening products to the most visible teeth, which is generally the point since people are usually focused on what’s aesthetically pleasing, the problem you might encounter is that the nature of the original stains affects how evenly your teeth whiten. As a result, you can end up with a very uneven color tone across the most visible teeth. Needless to say, there is nothing attractive about this effect.
Costs of Bleaching Procedures
Bleaching treatments are somewhat expensive for most people because the costs range from about $600 to $1,000. These figures are particularly about what happens for those who go to the dentist’s office to have the job done professionally. On one hand, you can avoid some of the aforementioned risks of uneven tooth tones when you ensure that the job will be done professionally, but there are ways to cut these rates in half if you’re a do-it-yourselfer who’s willing to work with a take-home whitening kit. Obviously, you end up running the aforesaid risks much more significantly because—let’s be honest—you only halfway understand what you’re doing. Truth be told, we all only halfway understand anything we do in life.
The Impermanence
Another issue that people run into is the fact that, as mentioned earlier, these bleaching treatments are hardly indelible. Give it time, and you’ll have to spend whatever you initially spent all over again. Fortunately, they do last a fairly lengthy duration so that you can daisy-chain these bleaching procedures over the course of several years to sustain the ivory brightness of your smile. In general, though, these treatments are going to maintain themselves pretty well for about a year at the very least. If you have good oral hygiene habits, this should stretch to two years or maybe even three.
Smoking, chewing tobacco, and drinking coffee are three of the most common obstacles to sustaining a white smile. These are also three of the primary factors that contribute to darkening and staining your teeth faster for those who are wondering how to make these whitening procedures last longer. There are plenty of other foods, drinks, and habits that can affect the whiteness of your teeth similarly, but these factors specifically are those that can drastically impinge upon your bleaching and potentially ruin it within a matter of months.
