Teeth Whitening Guide
There are many options out there for teeth whitening, ranging from the cheap to the very expensive. At-home solutions (consumer products) will typically be much cheaper than anything that a dentist does, and also less painful. What you sacrifice is reliability, speed, and effectiveness.
A few things to note are that the effectiveness of a teeth whitening procedure can depend on the individual, and also some techniques cause tooth sensitivity in some individuals.
In-Office - Dentist’s Office Whitening
In-office, your dentist has a lot of control over achieving specific color shades. They are also much faster - you can have the results you want in about an hour. One standard technique dentists use is to apply whitening gel three times, each time for 15-20 minutes, and activate it using a special lamp.
However in addition to increased costs (the bill may be $400-$1000), in-office whitening can also result in greater incidence of temporary tooth sensitivity. Some patients are more sensitive to whte potent whitening agents that dentists use.
At-Home Whitening
There’s a very wide of array of at-home options as well. These will take much longer than in-office procedures to show results, but are cheaper, and also offer more flexibility. There are prescription whitening agents that your dentist can prescribe for you for at-home use. There are also over-the-counter products suce as teeth whitening strips.
The most effective is of course the prescription agent. This is usually a whitening gel that you place on your teeth for some period of time, which can be as short 30-60 minutes, or up to overnight. Results will typically take 3-10 days.
Less expensive over-the-counter solutions vary from whitening gels to whitening stips. There are even toothpastes which are advertised as containing whitening agents, though these will not be very effective compared to other treatments.
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