During the orthodontic treatment, you must inform your dentist in timely manner if failing to clean your teeth properly. The dentist may arrange regular dental cleaning or scaling for you to avoid white square patches left by the brackets on your teeth after the braces are removed.

When wearing braces, many patients complain it is difficult for tooth brushing, and their teeth have turned yellow. What to do? This issue also happens to those who have just gone through the treatment, but what to do? Let’s find the answer below.

If you're still wearing the braces:

You must pay great attention to this issue. Usually the main cause of yellow teeth is improper oral cleaning. Braces, especially those with brackets, will make it more difficult to clean the teeth, which means you need to make more efforts to get teeth cleaned, like mastering the correct method of tooth brushing, brushing your teeth after every meal and brushing for longer time, etc.

If the braces are removed:

Braces can be removed when the treatment is ended. After that, the discolored teeth can be treated properly.

1. The common method is dental cleaning.

Tooth cleaning can remove pigmentation, food debris, and calculus and plaque resulted from improper tooth brushing during the teeth straightening period, thus restoring the clean surface of the teeth.

2. If dental cleaning fails, you may need to try professional whitening treatment, for example, cold light whitening which can restore the shade of the teeth.

Cold light whitening can produce a whitening result by applying a special whitening agent and using low-temperature cold light to destain the teeth. This method, time-saving and low-cost, is available for mild tooth discoloration, but the final result varies from case to case, and there is a possibility of rebounce in 1-2 years.

3. Serious endogenous tooth discoloration like tetracycline teeth, dental fluorosis may need to be fixed with veneers.

Dental veneer is a prosthesis attached to the surface of a tooth. It can cover the discolored tooth and present a whitening outcome, but the tooth has to be trimmed a little bit for the fitting of the veneer. This method is effective, but it requires to file down the natural teeth.

More serious case may need to be resolved with all-ceramic crowns. But usually this method is not recommended if your teeth are healthy. After all, whether a method is available or not depends on the dentist’s evaluation after dental examination.