If you’ve heard about teeth whitening but haven’t tried it yet, you may have your reservations or questions about it. Most people are held back due to the general lack of information about this relatively new procedure.
Hopefully, you’ll learn some new things about how the teeth whitening process works as you read this article. It’s a very simple process once you get to know it, but it’s taken a lot of scientific effort to develop it to the state it’s in today.
Preparing the trays
Standard tooth whitening is performed with a bleaching gel. This gel needs to be applied to the teeth, but there’s an important detail – it has to be spread across the teeth evenly, otherwise your teeth won’t be bleached properly – some will be left yellower while others will be shining white. This is something you want to avoid, so this is where trays come in.
A tray is basically an inverted sculpture of your teeth, which you fill with gel and then place over the teeth. You can either use the trays that come with most teeth bleaching kits, or you can go to a dentist to get a customized one. The latter is usually the better choice if you want a perfect fit.
Preparing the gel
The bleaching gel needs to be activated in order to work. There are two methods of activation which are currently used – light and chemical. Light activation works by illuminating the teeth with an UV light or a special kind of laser after the bleaching, which will not only make the chemicals begin their operation, but will also speed up the process.
Chemical activation works by giving you the bleaching agent in two separate tubes, which you then mix to form the actual bleaching agent. By mixing them, you trigger their activation as well. This type of bleaching requires no light, as the entire activation is done by the mixing of the chemicals.
You should keep in mind that this type of bleaching may take a bit longer than light-activated ones, as the chemicals need to be toned down in order to be kept safe. However, the quality of bleaching stays more or less the same between the different types, so you shouldn’t worry about getting unsatisfactory results – the results should be top notch, just like bleaching with light-activated chemicals. It’s the time which will vary greatly.