What is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic tooth stains?

Extrinsic stains sit on the outside of the enamel, trapped in the thin protein film (the acquired pellicle) that coats every tooth. They come from coffee, tea, red wine, cola, tobacco, chlorhexidine mouthwash and staining bacteria, and they can be physically removed by a whitening toothpaste and a professional clean. Intrinsic discolouration is inside the tooth — the natural colour of your dentine, decades of enamel thinning, tetracycline, fluorosis, or trauma. It is the tooth's own colour, not a deposit, so no toothpaste can remove it.

How do I tell which type of tooth stain I have?

The definitive test is a professional scale and polish. If the discolouration visibly lifts, it was extrinsic. If the teeth are exactly the same colour afterwards, it is intrinsic. Two other clues: extrinsic stain builds gradually and is worst where you clean least, while intrinsic colour was either present when the tooth erupted or appeared after one specific event, such as a knock.

Will a whitening toothpaste fix intrinsic stains?

No. A whitening toothpaste works by removing and disrupting surface deposits on the enamel. Intrinsic discolouration is inside the dentine or bound into the enamel structure, where a toothpaste physically cannot reach. It will do NOTHING for tetracycline banding, fluorosis, a traumatised tooth, or your natural dentine shade. Those need a dentist.

Why is one of my teeth darker than the others?

A single darker tooth — grey, brown or pink — is almost always intrinsic and almost always caused by trauma, often an old knock you may have forgotten. The blow can rupture blood vessels inside the pulp, and blood breakdown products darken the dentine from within. It can also mean the nerve inside the tooth has died. This requires a dentist, not a whitening product. Book an assessment.

Are white spots on my teeth fluorosis, and can I whiten them away?

White flecks, lacy lines or chalky opaque patches are commonly dental fluorosis — caused by ingesting more fluoride than needed while the enamel was still forming in childhood. It is intrinsic, so bleaching will not remove the marks: it lightens the entire tooth and the white patches remain proportionally visible. The treatments that address it are dentist-performed — microabrasion, resin infiltration, or bonding.

Does fluorosis mean my teeth are weak?

No. Mild fluorosis is a cosmetic appearance issue only and is NOT a sign of weak or unhealthy teeth. The NHMRC's 2017 information paper on water fluoridation concluded that fluoridation at Australian levels reduces tooth decay and that the fluorosis seen at these levels is predominantly mild and cosmetic. It is not a reason to stop using fluoride toothpaste.

Can tetracycline staining be whitened?

Tetracycline discolouration is the most resistant discolouration in dentistry. It is laid down permanently inside the dentine while the teeth are forming, producing characteristic horizontal grey, brown or blue bands. Some cases respond partially to prolonged, dentist-supervised bleaching. Many do not respond meaningfully and are managed with veneers or bonding. No at-home product will shift it.

Do crowns, veneers and fillings whiten too?

No. Crowns, veneers and composite fillings are manufactured materials that permanently hold the shade they were made in. Whitening agents only act on natural tooth structure. If you lighten the natural teeth around a front-tooth restoration, that restoration will end up looking conspicuously dark by comparison, and matching it means replacing it at your cost. Speak to your dentist before whitening if you have any visible restorations.

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Stains: Which One Do You Have?

📖 12 min read · Updated 22/07/2026

Quick Summary

✔ There are only two kinds of tooth discolouration: extrinsic (on the surface of the enamel) and intrinsic (inside the tooth). Everything else is a subcategory.

✔ Extrinsic stain comes from coffee, tea, red wine, cola, tobacco and staining bacteria. It sits in the pellicle film on the enamel. A whitening toothpaste and a professional clean lift it.

❌ Intrinsic colour is BUILT IN — ageing, genetics, trauma, tetracycline, fluorosis, a dead nerve. A whitening toothpaste will do NOTHING for it.

✔ The single best test: does a professional scale and polish visibly remove it? If yes, it was extrinsic. If the colour is identical afterwards, it is intrinsic.

⚠️ One tooth darker than the rest is a red flag. That is almost always internal — often a dying or dead nerve after an old knock. See a dentist, not a whitening aisle.

❌ Crowns, veneers and composite fillings do NOT bleach. Whiten around front-tooth restorations and you will end up with a visible mismatch.

✔ Most adults have both at once. Clear the extrinsic layer first — only then can you see your true intrinsic shade.

Quick Answer

The difference between intrinsic vs extrinsic tooth stains is location, and location decides what can fix it. Extrinsic stains sit on the outside of the enamel, trapped in the thin protein film (the acquired pellicle) that coats every tooth. They are deposits — from coffee, tea, red wine, cola, tobacco, chlorhexidine mouthwash or chromogenic bacteria — and they can be physically removed. A whitening toothpaste and a professional scale and polish will shift them. Intrinsic discolouration comes from inside the tooth: the colour of your dentine, decades of enamel thinning, a childhood course of tetracycline, dental fluorosis, or bleeding inside a tooth after a knock. It is not a deposit sitting on anything. It is the tooth's own colour. No toothpaste on earth reaches it — the fix is dentist-supervised bleaching, internal bleaching, or bonding and veneers. Work out which one you have before you spend a cent. For genuine surface staining, LACALUT White & Repair is a whitening and enamel-supporting toothpaste from the German brand founded in 1925.

Two Categories. That Is The Whole Map.

Every discoloured tooth you have ever seen falls into one of two buckets, and the entire whitening industry depends on you not knowing which bucket you are in. Get it wrong and you will spend money on a product that was never physically capable of helping you. Get it right and the path is obvious.

Extrinsic means outside. The stain is a deposit that has adhered to the outer surface of the enamel. It went on, so it can come off.

Intrinsic means inside. The colour is within the dentine or bound into the enamel structure itself. Nothing was deposited — the tooth is simply that colour. You cannot scrub out a colour that is part of the material.

The line that saves you money

A whitening toothpaste works by removing and interrupting surface deposits. That is a real, legitimate cosmetic effect — on surface deposits. It will do NOTHING for an intrinsic stain. Not less. Nothing. If your discolouration is intrinsic, no toothpaste, no charcoal, no baking soda, no whitening strip bought at a servo will change it.

Extrinsic Stains: What They Are And Where They Come From

Within minutes of a professional clean, your teeth re-coat themselves. Saliva deposits a thin, sticky protein layer — the acquired pellicle — over every exposed surface of enamel. It is normal, it is protective, and it is also flypaper. Coloured molecules from everything you drink and eat bind to it. That is extrinsic stain.

Coffee is the classic. Tea is worse than most people expect — black tea is heavily loaded with tannins, which are outstanding at binding pigment to protein. Red wine, cola, dark berries, soy sauce, curries and beetroot all contribute. Tobacco is in a class of its own: tar and nicotine produce a stubborn yellow-brown to near-black film that no amount of casual brushing touches.

The Colours And What They Mean

Extrinsic stain is not always brown. The shade is a genuine clue to the cause.

Appearance	Typical cause	Who gets it
General yellow-brown film across most teeth	Coffee, tea, red wine, cola, tobacco — pigment bound to the pellicle	Adults, worsening steadily with years of exposure
Dark brown to black line hugging the gum, especially on the inside of lower front teeth	Chromogenic bacteria, tartar, or long-term chlorhexidine mouthwash use	Adults; also seen in children with otherwise good hygiene
Orange or reddish film along the gum margin	Chromogenic bacteria. Harmless. Comes straight off with a clean	Very common in children; alarming to parents, clinically trivial
Green stain, often on upper front teeth	Bacterial and fungal chromogens combined with heavy plaque and poor cleaning	Less common; mostly children
Brown patches only where you never quite reach	Plaque and pigment accumulating in the spots your brushing misses	Anyone with an incomplete brushing pattern

The Four Tells Of An Extrinsic Stain

Extrinsic stain behaves like a deposit, because that is what it is. It gives itself away.

Tell	Why it points to extrinsic
It accumulated gradually over months or years	Deposits build. Intrinsic colour is either present from eruption or appears after one specific event
It is worst where you clean least — behind the lower front teeth, along the gum line, between teeth	Cleaning removes it. Where cleaning does not reach, it stays
It comes back if you stop cleaning properly	Nothing regrows an intrinsic stain. Deposits re-deposit
A professional scale and polish visibly removes it	This is the definitive test. Surface deposits come off under a polish. Intrinsic colour does not budge

The good news

Extrinsic staining is the most common cause of a dull, yellowed smile in Australian adults — and it is the one you can actually do something about at home. This is the category a whitening toothpaste was built for.

What Actually Works On Extrinsic Stain

Intervention	What it does	Realistic expectation
Whitening toothpaste, twice daily	Removes and disrupts surface deposits in the pellicle; slows re-accumulation	Genuine improvement in surface stain with consistent use. It cleans the enamel — it does not change the tooth's underlying colour
Professional scale and polish	Mechanically removes tartar and polished-off surface stain that home brushing cannot reach	The single most effective one-off intervention for extrinsic stain. Also the diagnostic test for which category you are in
Interdental brushes or floss, daily	Clears plaque and pigment from between teeth — where a toothbrush has never been	Removes the dark shadows between teeth that most people mistake for decay
Rinse with water immediately after coffee, tea, wine or cola	Clears pigment before it binds to the pellicle	Free. Costs you nothing. Genuinely reduces the rate of new staining
Reduce the frequency, not just the volume	Sipping one coffee over two hours stains more than drinking it in five minutes	Frequency of exposure matters more than total quantity
Stop smoking	Removes the single most aggressive extrinsic staining agent there is	Nothing else on this list comes close for a smoker

One caution worth stating plainly: abrasion is not whitening. Scrubbing harder, or using a gritty DIY paste, wears enamel away permanently — and thinner enamel makes teeth look more yellow, not less, because the yellow dentine underneath shows through more. We cover the mechanics in detail in Does Teeth Whitening Damage Enamel? and in Does Whitening Toothpaste Actually Work?.

Surface stain is the one you can fix yourself.

LACALUT® White & Repair is a whitening and enamel-supporting toothpaste from the German oral care brand founded in 1925.

Shop LACALUT White & Repair

Intrinsic Discolouration: Colour That Is Part Of The Tooth

Now the other bucket. Intrinsic discolouration is not sitting on your teeth. It is your teeth.

A tooth is not one material. There is a translucent outer shell of enamel, and underneath it a thick core of dentine that is naturally yellow. Enamel is not white — it is glassy and semi-transparent. So the shade you see in the mirror is mostly the dentine, viewed through the enamel. Change the dentine, or change the thickness of the enamel over it, and the tooth changes colour from within. No deposit involved. Nothing to remove.

1. Your Natural Dentine Colour

Some people are simply born with more yellow, more grey, or more opaque dentine, and with thinner or thicker enamel. This is genetic, it is not a stain, and it is not a hygiene failure. The people with dazzling white teeth in the toothpaste advertisement mostly won a genetic lottery, and the rest were retouched. You can bleach this shade lighter under a dentist. You cannot brush it lighter.

2. Ageing — The Most Universal Cause There Is

Teeth genuinely darken with age, and the mechanism is mechanical, not dirty. Across decades, enamel gradually thins from ordinary wear and dietary acid. Simultaneously, the tooth lays down secondary dentine inside itself — the dentine core gets thicker and darker.

Thinner, more translucent enamel over darker, thicker dentine. Of course the tooth looks yellower. This is not neglect. It is biology, and it happens to everyone who keeps their teeth long enough. It is also the reason a 55-year-old and a 20-year-old with identical hygiene do not have the same shade. We break this down further in Why Are My Teeth Yellow?.

3. Tetracycline Staining

Tetracycline antibiotics taken while teeth are still forming — broadly, in young children, and by a pregnant or breastfeeding mother — bind to calcium in the developing tooth structure and are laid down permanently inside the dentine. The result is a horizontal banded discolouration, grey, brown, blue or yellow, often running across several teeth at the same level, because it marks the exact period the drug was taken.

The bands are the giveaway. Nothing you eat or drink stains in neat horizontal stripes across matching teeth.

Tetracycline is the hardest case in whitening

Tetracycline discolouration is notoriously resistant to bleaching. Some cases respond partially to prolonged, dentist-supervised treatment. Many do not respond meaningfully at all, and are managed with veneers or bonding instead. If your teeth are banded grey-brown and you were prescribed antibiotics as a small child, a supermarket whitening product is NOT going to help you. See a dentist and have the case assessed properly before you spend anything.

For background, the association between tetracycline exposure during tooth development and permanent discolouration has been documented in the dental literature for decades — see the review of tooth discolouration aetiology and management by Watts and Addy in the British Dental Journal (2001), which remains the standard reference on stain classification.

4. Dental Fluorosis — The White Marks

Fluorosis is the odd one out, because the discolouration is usually whiter than the surrounding tooth, not darker. It develops when a child ingests more fluoride than needed while the enamel is still forming, which changes how the enamel mineralises. Mild cases look like faint white flecks, lacy lines, or chalky opaque patches. More pronounced cases show mottling and, at the severe end, brown discolouration and surface pitting.

Australia's public health position is clear. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Information Paper: Water Fluoridation — Dental and Other Human Health Outcomes (2017) concluded that water fluoridation at Australian levels reduces tooth decay, and that the fluorosis observed at these levels is predominantly of the mild, cosmetic kind. The Australian Dental Association (ADA) similarly supports community water fluoridation and the supervised use of fluoride toothpaste in children.

Say this part honestly

Mild fluorosis is a cosmetic appearance issue. It is NOT a sign of weak, unhealthy or failing teeth. It does not mean your enamel is defective, and it is not a reason to stop using fluoride toothpaste. What it does mean is that the white marks are inside the enamel — so scrubbing them, whitening them or bleaching them will not remove them. The usual outcome of bleaching fluorosed teeth is that the whole tooth lightens and the white marks stay proportionally visible. The treatments that actually address them are dentist-performed: microabrasion, resin infiltration, or bonding.

If the fluoride question itself is what is worrying you, we answer it directly in Is Fluoride In Toothpaste Safe?.

5. Trauma — The One Dark Tooth

This is the most clinically important paragraph in this article, so read it twice.

One tooth darker than all the others is not a stain. It is a signal.

If a single tooth — usually an upper front tooth — has gone grey, brown, pink or noticeably darker than its neighbours, the colour is coming from inside that tooth. It almost always follows a knock: a fall, a sporting hit, an elbow, an accident that may have happened years or even decades ago and seemed to cause no lasting damage. The blow can rupture blood vessels inside the pulp. Blood breakdown products seep into the dentine and darken it from within, sometimes months or years later. It can also mean the nerve inside the tooth has died. A dead or dying pulp will NOT fix itself, and a whitening product cannot touch it. This needs a dentist — not a supermarket. Book the appointment.

The dentist's job here is to determine whether the pulp is still alive. If it is not, the treatment is endodontic — and once the tooth has been treated, its colour can often be corrected by internal bleaching, where the whitening agent is placed inside the tooth rather than on it. That is a dental procedure. It is not something you can approximate at home.

6. Root Canal Treated Teeth

A tooth that has already had root canal treatment commonly darkens over the following years. The pulp — the living tissue that kept the dentine hydrated — is gone, and residual pigment from the pulp tissue or from the filling materials can discolour the dentine. Again: the colour is internal, so external whitening does nothing. Internal bleaching, a crown, or a veneer are the real options.

7. Developmental Enamel Defects

Enamel hypoplasia and molar incisor hypomineralisation (MIH) are developmental defects — the enamel did not form or mineralise correctly while the tooth was still developing. They typically appear as creamy-white, yellow or brown demarcated patches with a sharp border, present from the moment the tooth erupted. MIH is well described in the paediatric dental literature; Weerheijm and colleagues first characterised it as a distinct clinical entity in 2001, and it is now recognised as a common developmental condition affecting first permanent molars and incisors.

The tell is timing. The mark was there the day the tooth came through. Nothing you consumed afterwards put it there, and nothing you brush with will take it away.

The Identification Table: What You See vs What It Actually Is

Look in the mirror in good natural light — not bathroom downlights, which flatter everything. Find your pattern below.

What you see	Likely cause	Intrinsic or extrinsic	What can actually shift it
Even yellow-brown film across most teeth, built up over years	Coffee, tea, red wine, cola, tobacco bound to the pellicle	Extrinsic	Whitening toothpaste + professional scale and polish + rinse with water after staining drinks
Dark brown or black line along the gum, worst behind the lower front teeth	Chromogenic bacteria, tartar, or chlorhexidine mouthwash use	Extrinsic	Professional scale and polish. Home brushing alone will not remove hardened tartar
Orange or red film at the gum margin, often in a child	Chromogenic bacteria. Harmless	Extrinsic	A professional clean. It wipes off. No cause for alarm
Green film, usually a child, upper front teeth	Bacterial and fungal chromogens with heavy plaque	Extrinsic	Professional clean + a genuine improvement in daily brushing
Teeth are simply a warm yellow overall and always have been	Your natural dentine colour showing through translucent enamel	Intrinsic	Dentist-supervised bleaching only. No toothpaste changes this. It is not a stain
Teeth have slowly yellowed and dulled over decades	Ageing: enamel thinning, dentine thickening and darkening	Intrinsic (usually with an extrinsic layer on top)	Clean off the extrinsic layer first, then discuss bleaching with a dentist for the rest
Horizontal grey, brown or blue bands across several teeth	Tetracycline antibiotics taken during tooth development	Intrinsic	Highly resistant. Prolonged dentist-supervised bleaching in some cases; veneers or bonding in most. NOT a toothpaste problem
White flecks, lacy lines, chalky opaque patches or mottling	Dental fluorosis from excess fluoride ingested during tooth development	Intrinsic	Microabrasion, resin infiltration or bonding by a dentist. Bleaching lightens the whole tooth but leaves the marks visible
ONE tooth darker than the rest — grey, brown or pink	Trauma. Internal bleeding or a dead nerve	Intrinsic	SEE A DENTIST. The nerve may be dead. Internal bleaching after treatment — never a whitening product
A tooth that has had a root canal is now visibly darker	Loss of the pulp; residual pigment in the dentine	Intrinsic	Internal bleaching, a crown, or a veneer. External whitening does nothing
Sharply bordered creamy, yellow or brown patches, present since the tooth erupted	Enamel hypoplasia or molar incisor hypomineralisation	Intrinsic	Dentist assessment. Resin infiltration, bonding or restoration
Teeth got whiter but the front fillings or crowns did not	Restorations do not bleach. They hold their original shade	Neither — it is a materials problem	Nothing whitens a restoration. It must be replaced to match the new shade. Talk to your dentist before you whiten

Most Adults Have Both. Here Is Why That Matters.

It is rarely a clean either-or. A typical 45-year-old Australian has decades of ageing-driven intrinsic yellowing, with a layer of coffee-and-wine extrinsic stain sitting on top of it. Two problems, stacked, and only the top one is visible.

This is exactly why a dentist will always clean the teeth before assessing shade. Removing the extrinsic layer reveals the true intrinsic baseline. Until that layer is gone, nobody — including you — actually knows what colour your teeth are.

The correct order of operations

1. Get a professional scale and polish. 2. Look at the result in daylight. 3. Whatever colour remains after that clean is your intrinsic shade. 4. Now, and only now, decide whether you want to spend money changing it — and take that decision to a dentist, not to a shelf.

Restorations Do NOT Bleach. This Catches People Out Constantly.

Crowns, veneers, composite fillings, bonded repairs — every one of them is an inert manufactured material. It holds the shade it was made in. Permanently.

Whitening agents work on natural tooth structure. They have no effect on porcelain or composite resin. So if you have a white filling in a front tooth, or a crown on an incisor, and you successfully lighten the natural teeth around it, the result is a restoration that now looks conspicuously dark and yellow against its neighbours. It was matched to your old shade. It cannot follow you to a new one.

Check your mouth before you whiten

If you have any restoration on a visible front tooth, speak to your dentist before starting any whitening. Matching restorations to a new shade means replacing them — at your cost. Plenty of people discover this the hard way, after the fact.

The Self-Test: Two Questions, One Answer

You do not need a specialist to get a strong preliminary read. You need two honest answers.

Question	Answer	What it means	Do this
Did a professional scale and polish visibly remove or lighten it?	Yes	It was a surface deposit	Extrinsic. Whitening toothpaste + regular cleans + rinse after coffee, tea and wine will keep it under control
Did a professional scale and polish visibly remove or lighten it?	No — identical colour afterwards	The colour is inside the tooth	Intrinsic. A toothpaste will do NOTHING. Discuss bleaching, bonding or veneers with a dentist
Has it been there since the tooth came through, or is it just ONE dark tooth?	Yes	Developmental, or internal bleeding from trauma	Intrinsic. See a dentist. A single dark tooth may mean a dead nerve
Did it creep in gradually and get worse in the spots you clean least?	Yes	Classic deposit behaviour	Extrinsic. This is the category home care actually reaches

One more clue worth knowing about, because it trips people up: if you have used a chlorhexidine mouthwash for an extended period, brown surface staining is a recognised and well-documented side effect. It is extrinsic, it is reversible, and a professional clean removes it. Full detail in our guide to chlorhexidine mouthwash in Australia.

What Actually Works, By Category

Your category	What works	What is a waste of your money
Extrinsic — food, drink, tobacco, bacteria	Whitening toothpaste twice daily; professional scale and polish; daily interdental cleaning; rinsing with water after staining drinks	Nothing abrasive and homemade. Scrubbing with grit wears enamel and makes teeth look yellower long term
Intrinsic — natural shade or ageing	Dentist-supervised peroxide bleaching, which genuinely lightens tooth structure from within	Every whitening toothpaste on the market, for this purpose. It cannot reach where the colour is
Intrinsic — tetracycline	Dentist assessment. Prolonged supervised bleaching in some cases; veneers or bonding in most	Any at-home product marketed at 'stubborn stains'. This is the most resistant discolouration in dentistry
Intrinsic — fluorosis	Microabrasion, resin infiltration, or bonding — all dentist-performed	Bleaching alone. It lightens the whole tooth and the white marks remain proportionally visible
Intrinsic — single dark tooth after trauma	A dentist. Immediately. Assessment of pulp vitality, then internal bleaching if appropriate	Everything else. Every single thing else. This is not a cosmetic problem you can shop your way out of
Both at once (most adults)	Clean off the extrinsic layer first, hold it off with a whitening toothpaste, then take the true baseline to a dentist	Buying anything before you have seen your teeth clean. You do not yet know what you are treating

Know which one you have. Then treat the right one.

If yours is surface stain, LACALUT® White & Repair is a whitening and enamel-supporting toothpaste from the German oral care brand founded in 1925. Pair it with the LACALUT® White & Repair mouthwash for daily use.

Shop LACALUT White & Repair

Also available: LACALUT® White & Repair Mouthwash 300ml.

Medical disclaimer: This article is for general information only and does not constitute dental or medical advice. A single tooth that has darkened, banded discolouration, or any change in tooth colour following an injury should be assessed by a registered dental practitioner. Consult a dentist before beginning any whitening treatment, particularly if you have crowns, veneers or fillings on visible teeth.

Frequently Asked Questions — Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Tooth Stains

Question	Answer
What is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic tooth stains?	Extrinsic stains sit on the outside of the enamel, trapped in the thin protein film (the acquired pellicle) that coats every tooth. They come from coffee, tea, red wine, cola, tobacco, chlorhexidine mouthwash and staining bacteria, and they can be physically removed by a whitening toothpaste and a professional clean. Intrinsic discolouration is inside the tooth — the natural colour of your dentine, decades of enamel thinning, tetracycline, fluorosis, or trauma. It is the tooth's own colour, not a deposit, so no toothpaste can remove it.
How do I tell which type of tooth stain I have?	The definitive test is a professional scale and polish. If the discolouration visibly lifts, it was extrinsic. If the teeth are exactly the same colour afterwards, it is intrinsic. Two other clues: extrinsic stain builds gradually and is worst where you clean least, while intrinsic colour was either present when the tooth erupted or appeared after one specific event, such as a knock.
Will a whitening toothpaste fix intrinsic stains?	No. A whitening toothpaste works by removing and disrupting surface deposits on the enamel. Intrinsic discolouration is inside the dentine or bound into the enamel structure, where a toothpaste physically cannot reach. It will do NOTHING for tetracycline banding, fluorosis, a traumatised tooth, or your natural dentine shade. Those need a dentist.
Why is one of my teeth darker than the others?	A single darker tooth — grey, brown or pink — is almost always intrinsic and almost always caused by trauma, often an old knock you may have forgotten. The blow can rupture blood vessels inside the pulp, and blood breakdown products darken the dentine from within. It can also mean the nerve inside the tooth has died. This requires a dentist, not a whitening product. Book an assessment.
Are white spots on my teeth fluorosis, and can I whiten them away?	White flecks, lacy lines or chalky opaque patches are commonly dental fluorosis — caused by ingesting more fluoride than needed while the enamel was still forming in childhood. It is intrinsic, so bleaching will not remove the marks: it lightens the entire tooth and the white patches remain proportionally visible. The treatments that address it are dentist-performed — microabrasion, resin infiltration, or bonding.
Does fluorosis mean my teeth are weak?	No. Mild fluorosis is a cosmetic appearance issue only and is NOT a sign of weak or unhealthy teeth. The NHMRC's 2017 information paper on water fluoridation concluded that fluoridation at Australian levels reduces tooth decay and that the fluorosis seen at these levels is predominantly mild and cosmetic. It is not a reason to stop using fluoride toothpaste.
Can tetracycline staining be whitened?	Tetracycline discolouration is the most resistant discolouration in dentistry. It is laid down permanently inside the dentine while the teeth are forming, producing characteristic horizontal grey, brown or blue bands. Some cases respond partially to prolonged, dentist-supervised bleaching. Many do not respond meaningfully and are managed with veneers or bonding. No at-home product will shift it.
Do crowns, veneers and fillings whiten too?	No. Crowns, veneers and composite fillings are manufactured materials that permanently hold the shade they were made in. Whitening agents only act on natural tooth structure. If you lighten the natural teeth around a front-tooth restoration, that restoration will end up looking conspicuously dark by comparison, and matching it means replacing it at your cost. Speak to your dentist before whitening if you have any visible restorations.

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Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Stains: Which One Do You Have?

Two Categories. That Is The Whole Map.