How to Remove Plaque & Tartar From Your Teeth

We’ve all seen commercials and packaging claiming their product “fights plaque and tartar.” But beyond using those products and hoping for the best, many people don’t actually know how to remove plaque and tartar from their teeth.

From the basics to more advanced techniques, there is a lot you can do — and some things you never should. To help, here’s our guide to removing plaque and tartar.

Understanding Plaque and Tartar

People always seem to use the words plaque and tartar simultaneously. But while they’re closely related, they are two very different things. To properly understand how to eliminate them, you need to understand what they are.

What Is Plaque?

You wake up in the morning, run your tongue over your teeth, and they feel a little…fuzzy. That texture? It’s plaque.

Plaque is a sticky film that constantly forms on the teeth. You brush it away, and it instantly starts building back. It’s persistent because the ingredients it needs to form are always present: bacteria that naturally live in your mouth, saliva, and food particles, no matter how minuscule.

Everyone has plaque. It’s colorless, so you rarely see it until it really builds up, and even then, it blends into the teeth. Within just a few hours of brushing, saliva and bacteria mix with food particles and create plaque, coating the teeth but mostly hanging out along the gum line.

As the bacteria in plaque start consuming the sugar and starches from the food particles, they release acids. These acids can cause serious damage to the teeth and gums by attacking the enamel — the protective layer of the teeth — and eating away at your gum tissue. This can lead to cavities, gingivitis, and eventually periodontal disease. When left unchecked, these acids can even alter the jawbone.

The good news is that you can brush and floss plaque away. The bad news is that you need to do it within 24 hours. Otherwise, it can harden into tartar.

What Is Tartar?

Tartar is the calcified version of plaque, forming when plaque reacts to the minerals in saliva and sticking firmly to the teeth. Since plaque is inevitable and no one is 100% perfect in their brushing and flossing, everyone will eventually have tartar, too. The good news is that it’s easier to spot than plaque, since it’s yellow or brown, alerting you to the problem so you can get help.

The plaque-to-tartar timeline is different for every person. For some, calcification begins in just 24 hours. For others, it can take up to two weeks.

Tartar contains all the same bacteria and acids as plaque, but while you can brush and floss plaque away, tartar requires a professional cleaning. Since it’s hard, tartar offers bacteria the perfect shield and holds them against your teeth and gums, letting them create acids and cause decay undisturbed.

Since it traps bacteria and acid, tartar can also cause permanent tooth discoloration, while its acids and bacteria demineralize your teeth, causing sensitivity. But the big risks are the development of cavities and gum diseases, which can lead to everything from tooth damage to bone loss.

Risks Posed By Plaque and Tartar Buildup

We’ve already touched on some things that make plaque and tartar bad — cavities, gum disease, and decreased jawbone density. But we really want to drive home the importance of removing it, and that means discussing the dangers of letting plaque and tartar go unchecked.

If you don’t brush and floss regularly, here’s what might happen.

Bad Breath

This one is fairly minor, all things considered. Still, it’s often one that bothers people the most since it’s one of the earliest symptoms of plaque and tartar. Halitosis, or bad breath, comes from bacteria, and plaque and tartar give bacteria a home in your mouth.

Stained Teeth

Again, this is minor compared to some of the other risks, but it matters. Even if you get your tartar removed fairly quickly, it can stain your enamel, sometimes permanently. To eliminate these stains, you’ll need professional whitening treatments, which can be expensive.

Enamel Loss

Demineralization occurs when the acids in plaque and tartar extract minerals from the teeth, weakening, and eventually eroding, the enamel. Since enamel protects the teeth, demineralization leaves the more delicate structures vulnerable.

Thin enamel also has aesthetic concerns, since it allows the yellow dentin to show through — a discoloration you can’t whiten, only cover with veneers.

Tooth Decay

As the enamel wears down, it will develop cavities. This is tooth decay. Depending on their severity, cavities can result in cracked and crumbling teeth, tooth loss, abscesses, and more.

Gum Diseases

From gingivitis to periodontitis, gum diseases are among the biggest risks of unchecked plaque and tartar. As plaque and tartar build up, their acids and bacteria irritate and eventually damage the gums. This causes a variety of complications, including redness, swelling, pain, and bleeding, and harming the support structures of the teeth.

Jawbone Loss

One of those support structures bacteria and acids compromise? The jawbone. As they enter the gum line, they can erode the bone, making it thinner, weaker, and less functional as an anchor for the teeth.

Tooth Migration

The gums, jawbone, and ligaments anchor the teeth in place. When they suffer damage, the teeth can shift out of place. This comes with its own complications, including jaw pain, a bad bite, difficulty chewing, and more.

Tooth Loss

Both tooth decay and gum disease can — and will — lead to tooth loss if left unchecked. This is problematic in many ways, from making eating more difficult to encouraging larger tooth shifts. Plus, replacing missing teeth is expensive.

General Health Problems

Ultimately, your oral health and general health are closely related. Studies have linked bacteria and gum inflammation to everything from cardiovascular disease to diabetes. Even struggling to chew properly can have an effect, making it harder to digest food and causing gastrointestinal distress or nutritional deficiencies.

How to Remove Plaque

If your goal is to prevent tartar and all the problems it causes, you have to remove plaque before it calcifies. Fortunately, that’s easy to do at home — with a few key tips and tricks. While cleaning your teeth is simple, small errors can let tartar take hold.

Select the Right Tools

To properly eliminate plaque, you need the right tools. The most important is your toothbrush. Choose one with soft bristles that fits well in your mouth. For many, brushes with smaller, round heads are best, but it depends on the size of your mouth and teeth. It’s also a good idea to go with an electric toothbrush, since studies have shown they clean plaque better than manual brushes.

The next tool you need is toothpaste. Make sure you choose one with fluoride — unless your dentist has directed you otherwise — since fluoride helps protect and even repair the enamel. If you want to fight bacteria, check the ingredients list for triclosan.

Next up: floss and mouthwash. Floss is the more important of the two, since mouthwash is completely optional, but there aren’t any rules regarding which type to select. Standard floss is slightly better than floss picks, since picks have a greater risk of transferring bacteria from one gap to another. But in the end, go with whatever you find convenient; getting the job done is what matters most.

There is one tool you might be tempted to get but should avoid: a plaque scraper. If you aren’t a trained dentist or dental hygienist, you are more likely to damage your gums and enamel than improve your oral health. Skip the plaque scraper and focus on brushing and flossing.

Determine Your Ideal Oral Hygiene Schedule

The standard oral hygiene schedule is as follows:

• Brush your teeth twice a day — once in the morning and once before bed. Each brushing session should be at least two minutes long. During that time, make sure you brush every surface of each tooth.
• Floss once a day, getting into the spots your brush cannot reach.
• If you use mouthwash, rinse with it once a day for no more than 30 seconds.
• Every 3–4 months, replace your toothbrush or electric brush head.
• Every six months, visit your dentist for a deep cleaning that removes tartar.

However, you are unique and this schedule might not be right for you. Consider this the minimum; you might benefit from brushing three times a day, flossing twice or more, and seeing your dentist every three months rather than every six. Use the basic schedule as your starting point, but don’t treat it as the gold standard. You need to meet your needs, whether or not that means following this schedule.

Customize Your Brushing Technique

Like the standard schedule, the standard brushing technique might not be right for you. The conventional approach is to use small, round strokes on the outside of the teeth and short, back-and-forth strokes on the chewing surfaces of the teeth. You should hold the brush at a 45-degree angle to the teeth in most cases, and a more direct angle on the chewing surfaces.

This is ideal for most people, but what if you aren’t in the majority? The problem is that you might not know if you are or aren’t. After all, most of us aren’t oral health experts. Luckily, there is an easy trick: brush your teeth using the standard method, then use a plaque-disclosing tablet.

You can get these tablets online and at most pharmacies. They use pigment to show where you missed removing plaque. Then, you can brush until you get it all. Pay attention to the approaches that work best, then repeat it in those spots every time you brush.

How to Remove Tartar

Once tartar develops, it has to go. The problem is that, unlike plaque, it sticks firmly to your teeth. Removing it requires special tools and approaches — and not ones that are considered safe for at-home use, so you’ll need to rely on your dentist.

Professional Tartar Removal

Dental cleanings start with a thorough examination of the mouth. Your dentist or one of their staff will use special mirrors to view all surfaces of the teeth and gums, identifying places tartar has accumulated. Once they know where your tartar is, they’ll use a scaler to remove it.

Scalers can be manual (the hook most of us are familiar with) or ultrasonic. Some offices use a combination of the two, relying on the manual scaler for the gum line and an ultrasonic one for the rest of the tooth surfaces.

If you have extensive tartar build-up, you might need root planing and scaling. This is a procedure that gets underneath the gums to clear tartar from the tooth roots. It can help address gum disease as well, though it’s not a prerequisite for the procedure.

The Dangers of DIY Tartar Removal

You can easily purchase the tools your dentist uses online or in stores for use at home. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

DIY tartar removal is dangerous unless you are a trained professional. And even then, you’re better off handing the task to another trained individual, since they have a better view of your teeth. But why is it dangerous? Because without the right approach, the tools that remove tartar can also remove other substances and tissues, including enamel and gingiva.

This is risky because neither enamel nor gum tissue regenerates. Once they’re gone, you have to replace enamel with veneers or crowns and gingiva with tissue grafts. Loss of enamel and gum tissue leaves you vulnerable to everything from cavities to serious infections. At-home tartar removal might seem more convenient, but in the end, it’s better to leave it to the professionals.

Safer At-Home Options

With a quick Google search, you can find plenty of at-home remedies for tartar build-up that don’t require scalers. These methods are usually considered safer, if not completely risk-free, but their effectiveness is debatable.

Still, if you are looking to lower the chances of developing complications from tartar, look into some of the following options. Just clear them with your dentist first.

• Use a toothpaste that says it controls or eliminates tartar
• Buy toothpaste that includes baking soda
• Swish with a vinegar and salt water rise
• Gently scrub with a glycerine and aloe vera mixture
• Rub your teeth with the inside of an orange peel
• Eat unripe guava with salt
• Eat spicy foods to encourage more saliva production

Final Thoughts

Removing plaque at home is easy; it just requires the right approach to brushing and flossing. Select the right tools and customize your approach to best meet your unique needs.

As for tartar, focus on at-home prevention, not removal. Leave that to the professionals to avoid enamel and gum damage.