You may be one of Guildford’s most diligent tooth brushes and flossers, but no matter how on it you are with the oral hygiene, if your teeth are discoloured, they are never going to look amazing.

And that feeling that everyone notices what colour your teeth are? Well, it’s real. Human beings evolved to hone in each other’s smiles, firstly as a way as telling if someone is a friend or an enemy, but also as a way of assessing their general health. We can’t help but look.

Good news: teeth whitening is easy

The good news is that most discolouration is just surface. Staining builds up over the years after minute traces of drinks such as red wine, tea or coffee and foods such as rich tomato sauces get trapped in the pores of our tooth enamel.

It can be easily removed with a good teeth-whitening gel, such as Enlighten, which is what we use here at Farnham Road Dental Practice. In all the time we have been using the Enlighten system, we have had 100% success.

The active ingredient in teeth whitening gel is hydrogen peroxide. This whitener has been around for a couple of hundred years and is also used to bleach hair. It comes in different strengths. The gel we use is stronger by far than the gels you can buy in a supermarket or on the internet.

Whitening at home

If you’d like to get your teeth whitened, you need to come into the dental clinic so that we can take impressions of your teeth and use them to make you a pair of whitening trays that exactly fit your teeth. The trays ensure that there is maximum contact between the gel and your teeth.

You put the gel in the trays and wear them every day for a short period every day for 2-3 weeks. We also supply you with a desensitising gel as sensitivity can be an issue when you get your teeth whitened.

Whitening is not permanent, but you can top up your treatment every 3-4 months by wearing the gel trays overnight.