How Does Professional Teeth Whitening Work at Home?

The best teeth whitening results come from dental office procedures. Over-the-counter, at-home treatments simply aren’t as powerful as professional formulations and techniques. And when you take home a kit designed to work with your office whitening, you’ll be amazed by your results.

At RR Dentistry in Georgetown, Texas we use the KöR® Whitening system and its full line of products to give our patients the brightest smiles, including treatment of certain stains that fall short with other systems. KöR Whitening includes a choice of home products to suit your needs and lifestyle. 

Whitening basics

Your teeth naturally tend toward light gray and yellow shades. As you get older, your teeth darken due to food and drink staining and through the effects of thinning tooth enamel, which reveals more of the yellow color of dentin, the below-the-surface layer of your teeth.

The standard of whiteness set by the famed Hollywood smile doesn’t exist naturally, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring your brilliance up several notches. There are two approaches to improving the whiteness of your smile: surface whiteners and bleaches. 

Surface whiteners use abrasives to wear away stains on the surface of your teeth. While they can help reduce the reminders of things like blueberries, coffee, and tea, surface whiteners can’t make your smile whiter than your original tooth color. For that, you need bleaches. 

While you can buy over-the-counter bleaching products, these have a much weaker formulation than what we use in our office. Dental bleaches have the potential for misuse causing damage to your mouth, so consumer versions err on the side of safety. While it’s difficult to harm your teeth with a consumer kit, the limited strength also restricts the amount of whiteness you can expect. 

The gold standard for teeth whitening uses professional-strength bleaching applied by thoroughly trained whitening experts. 

The KöR Whitening difference

One reason consumer whitening bleaches fall short is the effect of saliva. It takes only minutes for saliva to neutralize the bleaching chemicals. When you start with low-power bleach and it quickly degrades, improvements to your smile are never dramatic. 

KöR Whitening at-home products use the specially-designed KöR-Seal™ trays to block out saliva. When used with KöR gels, you gain the benefits of overnight activity of 6-10 hours, rather than the 30 minutes of active bleaching offered by other whitening systems.

Another advantage is the customizable nature of KöR Whitening treatments. You choose the combination of in-office and at-home procedures to match your needs. You can select a stronger program if you have dark, age-related staining. Tetracycline stains might be the toughest of all. Once thought to be permanent, these stains show excellent results with the KöR ULTRA-T system. 

Find out more about the at-home treatment plan that’s the ideal complement to in-office treatments by visiting us at RR Dentistry. You can book an appointment online or by phone to explore the benefits of KöR Whitening products and how they can address your smile goals.