Properly Cleaning Your Dental Retainer

Once your orthodontic treatment has been completed and your smile is as straight and beautiful as ever, you’ll need to wear a dental retainer. Retainers are worn to prevent your teeth from shifting out of position, which may result in the need for you to wear braces again in the future! Since your dental retainer will now be a part of your dental health routine forever, it’s very important that you learn how properly care for and clean this appliance.

Properly Caring for Your Dental Retainer 

Like anything else used on a daily basis, your dental retainer will wear out and get dirty with regular use. The bacteria in your mouth will accumulate on your retainer while you wear it all night long, causing it to look, smell, and taste unpleasant. You may also notice white calcium deposits forming on your retainer. This is all normal, but it does require that you are cleaning and sanitizing your retainer every day.

1. It’s important to clean your retainer immediately after you remove it from your mouth, while it is still wet. Allowing the bacteria in your saliva to harden will make it much more difficult to use.
2. Brushing your retainer is a good idea, although, with many retainer designs, your brush may not be able to reach all of its surfaces. Because of this, you may want to consider is soaking your dental retainer in a denture or retainer cleaning solution on a daily basis. The brand of a cleaning solution isn’t important, but make sure that it is anti-bacterial.
3. If you notice calcium deposits forming on your retainer, you will need the help of your orthodontist to remove them. Tartar-removing solutions can be used to avoid calcium deposits in the first place.

Properly caring for your retainer will make it last longer, saving you money on a replacement!

Even while your child is undergoing orthodontic treatment, he or she still needs to be seen every 6 months for a dental cleaning and a checkup. If it’s time to schedule your child’s regular dental appointment, please contact Little Rockies Pediatric Dentistry. Our children’s dentist is located in Parker, Colorado.