Teeth whitening in the nineties

Wite out?

I can't off-hand think of anything paint-like that would a) last and b) be non-toxic and c) not look like painted teeth ie weird. Teeth are somewhat translucent, which makes them tricky for dentists to colour-match. Most coatings for teeth are clear, bleaches and so forth.
Have you considered having him get caps?

Prior to the widespread use of various kinds of bleaching, caps were a common treatment sought by people with badly discolored teeth. I had a friend as a child (in the 70s) who had grayish stains on her teeth (looked like they were drawn on with pencil) because she'd been given tetracycline at a very young age. I know she tried some kind of bleaching treatment in high school (the 80s), and it didn't work too well, because the stains weren't just superficial. I think she went for caps eventually.

The downside of caps is that as you get older and the gums recede a bit, the darker material that was initially below the gum line often shows at the gum line. This has happened to a couple of people I know with crowns, and it tends to discourage wide smiling.

I honestly don't remember what was else available in the 90s, as tooth whitening was the furthest thing from my mind then (I remember my dentist used the whitest color they had for their resins when they had to put a filling someplace it would show), and they always oohed and aahed about how white my teeth were. But by 2010s standards, my teeth are positively drab. I assume current standards for tooth whiteness were driven by some technology or other that became available in the early 2000s.

Well, if your story is fantasy, or set in an alternative reality, all bets are off.

Veneers

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneer_(dentistry)[/URL]

WriterDude said:

Teeth whitening in the nineties...Some kind of glossy paint...

Click to expand...

I don't think the 90s is far enough in the past for a tooth whitening system as primitive as paint to be plausible. Dye, maybe, unless you want it to be interesting. Maybe a chemical that's activated with heat so the user has to aim a blow drier at his mouth. Or something that needs ultraviolet light so he applies it at the beach and smiles into the sun.

There were vital bleaching systems available from the mid-nineties on. Contact time was 8+ hours for days at a time. In the early nineties a system evolved from an Oriental pitchman that involved etching the teeth with an acid and painting on Zinc Oxide (think of the white stuff lifeguards used to put their noses before SPF 50+ sunblock) The dead white ZnO would catch in the micro-rough surface of the teeth and lighten the teeth. Think of a black stucco wall with flour thrown on it. While the wall wouldn't be white, it would be whiter. Same thing for the teeth. This was a temporary condition and reapplication on a daily or weekly basis was necessary. People didn't like the cost or that any of the bleaching systems weren't permanent.

My God, the Nineties were so . . . . . . . long ago . . . . . . people didn't even have Justin Bieber.


caw

FWIW, I had a computer and modem in the 80s. When I'd visit my grandmother in the 70s I'd find the old fashioned styling of the labels on some products in her kitchen cabinets to be fascinating, and her old fashioned refrigerator was clearly old fashioned looking. They were probably no more than 20 years old. But I just don't see a huge difference between the 90s and today.

People's lives didn't revolve around their phones yet. I had a couple of friends who got early cell phones. They were people who had to commute a lot in the sticks, but they were definitely just for safety and so on, not to be available to their friends 24-7, or texting, or sending pictures, or for playing games, or for surfing the web (the web was starting to be a thing, but it was still pretty basic).

And OMG, teens didn't even have My Space yet! And e-mail was edgy, not old fashioned.

I had a friend who got veneers on the early eighties. Her teeth were permanently stained from her mother taking antibiotics when pregnant with her. The dentist stressed that they were just cosmetic and would eventually come off.

I also knew someone who would get rid of the tobacco and coffee stains on her teeth by occasionally rubbing them down with Ajax (the powder you scour the bath tub with). It worked but I'd guess it etched her teeth so stains would accumulate again more quickly. Plus it's probably toxic or something. But it did whiten her teeth for the time being.

Veneers! Those were the things. Yes, they were around then.

The term always made me think of fake wood finish on particle board, lol.

The first time I ever heard the word computer was on an episode of Batman.

I got my teeth whitened in the mid to late 90s (I was a child model, I'm not kidding you). It was a ridiculously long process. First I had to have these plastic trays made from molds of my teeth and then I had to sleep with those stupid things in every night filled with a bleach solution. It tasted like chemical mint and I can still remember that horrible smell. It worked slowly. But maybe for your story, you could adapt the type of bleach or the process?

I have heard that teeth whitening methods that had been used in nineties were quite harmful. There was a risk of other dental problems after getting teeth whitening. Actually I want to become a popular Torrance dentist and just got admission in California dental University. So I usually read this kind of stuff.