How to Whiten a Dead Tooth

From whitening toothpastes, to whitening trays to professional fixes, there are different ways to revive your smile after a tooth dies. Whitening a dead tooth can take more work than whitening normal teeth. The tooth will not whiten to the same level that your regular teeth will unless you have a cap placed over it by your dentist, but you can bring it up a few levels with some drugstore products and other homemade fixes.

Things You'll Need

• Whitening toothpaste
• Whitening trays
• Whitening gel
• Dental caps

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Instructions

How to whiten a dead tooth

• 1

  Use whitening toothpaste daily. The toothpaste lifts stains and penetrates deeply to whiten teeth. This will help remove surface stains off of the dead tooth which can make the tooth appear more yellow or brown than it is.

• 2

  Avoid coffee, red wine or other known teeth-staining foods. The less surface stains you have on your teeth, the less noticeably dark a dead tooth with be. By having whiter teeth overall, your dead tooth with also be lighter.

• 3

  Brush a nighttime whitening gel over the tooth. This will further whiten the tooth, bringing it up to a closer level of whiteness as the other teeth. This will make the dead tooth less noticeable. It will take between four to six weeks to begin noticing a significant difference. The gel will whiten the tooth, but will not completely bring it to the same level of whiteness of a tooth that is not dead because the yellow or brown color is coming from the inside of the tooth. However, the gel is removing stains from the tooth which makes it appear even darker.

• 4

  Get a professional cap placed on the tooth if you want a dramatic difference.