I am getting a dental crown and want to update the whitening on my teeth before I have the crown made. It is going to be on a front tooth so I want my teeth white again. My dentist is having trouble advising me on this so I am hoping you can. Here are my questions:
- First, how many weeks do I need to touch up?
- How many hours each day should I wear the whitening trays?
- Does there need to be a time between whitening and making the dental crown?
Elaine
Dear Elaine,
I am glad you wrote and will be upfront that I am a little concerned your dentist either could not or would not answer this for you. Teeth whitening is among the most basic of cosmetic procedures. Having a dental crown placed on a front tooth is not. You may want to reconsider having this dentist do your crowns. The light hits our front teeth more, which exposes all the details of their color and translucency. You want a dentist who can match them exactly while having them blend in naturally with the remainder of your teeth. This will take an expert cosmetic dentist.
We’ll go over how to find the type of dentist you need for this momentarily. For now, let’s go over how to get your teeth to the level of whiteness you need. The key principle here is the longer you wear the whitening gel, the faster they will whiten. I suggest having custom-fit teeth whitening trays made then wearing the whitening gel for as long as you comfortably can. You will find you whiten faster if you are able to wear them overnight.
Let’s say you can only tolerate wearing them an hour a day, though. That is okay too. It just means you will need to wear them for more consecutive days than you’d need if you wore them longer.
There is one hard and fast rule which answers your third question. Is there a time period you need to wait between finishing your whitening and having your dental crown made? The answer to that is one-week. The oxygen will continue to release for another week after you finish whitening, so it usually takes that long for the color to settle.
Pretty much any dentist can do teeth whitening. It’s a fairly simple procedure. For your crowns, however, I want you to go to someone with cosmetic training as well as artistry. I would look for either an AACD accredited dentist or a dentist listed on the mynewsmile.com website. These are the best cosmetic dentists in the country.
This blog is brought to you by Des Moines Dentist Dr. Phelan Thomas.