When can yellow teeth be a good thing?
Oddly enough, if you’re in the market for Raleigh tooth whitening treatments, you might hope that your teeth are yellow. That doesn’t mean you should try to stain them. It just means that if your underlying tooth color (underneath the enamel) is in the yellow family, the tooth whitening process is more likely to give you the results you’re wanting, especially if you want bright white teeth.
Many people don’t understand that the results of tooth whitening are influenced by the underlying tooth color, and that tooth whitening (bleaching) only affects the outer (enamel) layer. In fact, a cosmetic dentist can show you the basic system that is used to classify tooth color. We can help you understand, based on that classification system, what type of results you might expect. This is one of the key reasons that the results you get aren’t quite as bright as the results that your best friend received – even if the treatment was identical. (By the way, tooth whitening treatments should ALWAYS be adapted to the individual patient!)
While there are many types of classification systems for tooth appearance (hue, chroma, value indicators), the “classic” system involves identification of four different hues for the underlying tooth color – A for brown, B for yellow, C for grey, and D for red-grey. These systems are used not only for tooth whitening, but also for making porcelain veneer decisions. It takes a trained eye to determine which color your teeth are – and we use comparative ceramic teeth samples in each color to guide us. It’s not something you’ll determine from just looking in your mirror! Patients often can’t discern the difference between some of the 16 ceramic samples in the classic system, although a well-trained eye can. Tooth whitening for grey (or C) colored teeth can be more challenging than it is for yellow (or B) teeth.
The underlying tooth color is only one of several factors that we take into account in discussing with you what tooth whitening results are reasonable to expect. The “classic” system from Vita is one of the simpler ones, and using even that system goes beyond the four simple (A, B, C, D) categories. We’ll be glad to explain to you our assessment of the tooth whitening effects you’re likely to achieve, along with your aspirations. As with many health-related issues, heredity plays a big role in what we have to work with. If you’ve been considering tooth whitening and discover that you truly have yellow teeth, heredity may have worked in your favor!
