I need some advice on retouching my bleached teeth — I used Opalescence 20% PF. How many weeks should I touch up and how many hours each day? I don’t want a “glow-in-the-dark” white smile, but I do want to maintain my desired whiteness. I will also be having some crowns placed in the near future and wonder if I should stop whitening a certain length of time before my appointment to ensure a correct color match?

Sara in Georgia

Sara,
As with Opalescence 20% PF and most other brands of bleaching gel, there are no specific answers on how long you should touch up. When talking about crown matching, your dentist should be able to answer these questions for you, and if not, you should have some concerns. Many dentists today are not true cosmetic dental artists, so your desire to achieve a beautiful smile could be in jeopardy if your dentist lacks the skills needed for true cosmetic dentistry.

Can you whiten your teeth too much? There is no clear answer on that because the pace of whitening slows the more you do it, but the teeth will keep getting whiter. Your dentist should ask you several questions in determining what is best option for you:

• How satisfied you are with the current color?
• How much did you bleach them?
• Have your teeth darkened much since the initial whitening?
• What would you consider to be their ideal whiteness?

Teeth sensitivity will more often than not determine when and how long you whiten your teeth. If you are not experiencing sensitivity, bleach as long as you can. Bleaching overnight is ideal because the gel will typically last all night since your mouth produces less saliva. If you have to bleach during the day, you’ll have to add gel several times because saliva can get into the trays and wash it out. Just be sure you can get at least 20-30 minutes of bleaching time in because that is now long it takes for the gel to soak into the tooth.

Before any color-matching is done on your new crowns, you’ll want to be sure to have stopped whitening approximately two weeks prior. The secret to teeth whitening is in the peroxide gel releasing tiny bubbles of pure oxygen within your tooth, oxidizing the stains and darker colors. These little oxygen bubbles need time to disperse in order to get a true color. If you are doing eight front teeth, the color of the back teeth and the lower teeth just need to be a close match, so a week would be sufficient. If you need an exact color match of a front tooth with a crown matched to another front tooth with natural enamel, you need to wait the full two weeks. If your dentist cannot easily articulate this information to you, you should rethink whether or not f this is the best dentist to give you a new smile.

Remember, your teeth will pick up stains from food or drinks like coffee, tea, berries, etc. Typically, whitening for 2-3 days for an hour/day once every year or two should help you maintain that bright white bleached color.

This post is sponsored by New Orleans cosmetic dentist Dr. Duane Delaune. Find out why many consider Dr. Delaune to be the best dentist in New Orleans.