About sixty minutes, one visit.
In-office whitening with Dr. Rita Snyder. Your first whitening visit is $150, and you leave a few shades brighter the same day.
Teeth Whitening
One hour in the chair. A few shades brighter.
Smile Perfected in-office whitening takes about sixty minutes in the chair and lifts your teeth a few shades in a single visit at our Palm Harbor office. Your first whitening visit is $150. Most patients notice only brief, temporary sensitivity in the first day or two.
What happens at a whitening visit?
- ITalk it throughwhat whitening can change
- IISettle inno numbing needed
- IIIWhiteningabout sixty minutes
- IVRinse and looka few shades brighter
- VBack to your daynothing to take home
Straight Answers
What can whitening actually change?
A few shades, in one visit. Where you land depends on the shade you start at and on what’s causing the color. Surface staining that builds up slowly from coffee, tea, red wine, and years of ordinary use is what whitening lifts best.
Three things, honestly. Deep staining that sits inside the tooth rather than on it doesn’t lift the way surface staining does. Chips, worn edges, and gaps are a shape problem, not a color problem. And whitening gel has no effect on porcelain or composite. If any of that sounds like your smile, veneers and bonding are the tools that do move it, and both are covered on our cosmetic dentistry page.
They stay exactly the shade they were made in. So the natural teeth around them lighten and the restorations can start to look darker by comparison, which is the opposite of what most people are after. It’s worth raising before you whiten rather than after, and it’s a good use of the free thirty-minute consultation with Dr. Snyder.
Most patients notice only brief, temporary sensitivity in the first day or two, the kind that shows up with something cold and then passes. Tell us if your teeth already run sensitive and we can talk it through before we start rather than in the middle.
Not forever, and anyone who promises otherwise is guessing. Coffee, tea, red wine, and tobacco all pull the shade back down over time, and how quickly that happens varies a great deal from person to person. Ask Dr. Snyder at your visit what’s realistic given your habits, and keep up with cleanings, which do a lot of the work of holding a bright shade. Our preventive dentistry page walks through what those visits include.
Whitening is the least invasive of the three, and it changes shade and nothing else, which makes it the right place to start if your teeth are sound and simply darker than you’d like. Bonding reshapes a chip or a small gap with composite in a single visit, usually with no numbing and no lab involved. Porcelain veneers are hand-shaped to your features over 2–3 visits and last 10–15 years. Dr. Snyder developed a particular interest in cosmetic dentistry during her training, and the free thirty-minute consultation is where the three get weighed against your actual teeth. There is more on each one on the cosmetic dentistry page.
FAQ
What else do people ask us?
Your first Smile Perfected whitening visit with us is $150. Whitening is a cosmetic treatment and coverage for cosmetic work varies from plan to plan, so we verify your benefits before treatment and tell you where you stand first. We accept most PPO plans and select Medicare plans, though not HMO or Medicaid. There is more on our accepted insurances page.
Yes. We work with Cherry and CareCredit and can set up a monthly payment plan, which matters more if whitening is one piece of a larger plan rather than a one-off. Details are on the finance plans page. If you do not carry dental insurance at all, our Smile Club membership is built for exactly that situation.
That depends entirely on the week, so we’d rather you asked than guessed from a website. We are open Monday to Friday, 8AM to 4PM, with Saturdays by appointment. Call us at (727) 502-6667 and we’ll tell you what’s genuinely open, or book online and pick from what you see.
Whitening lifts the shade of the tooth itself, not the film sitting on top of it, so a lot of people prefer to whiten after a cleaning rather than before. Whether you need anything else looked at first depends on what’s actually going on in your mouth, and that is a question for the free consultation or a quick call to the office. We’d rather answer it properly than give you a rule that may not fit.
No, and that’s deliberate. The consultation is thirty minutes with Dr. Snyder, at no charge, and no treatment happens that day. It’s a conversation about what you want to change and what will get you there, with nothing to decide while you’re sitting in the chair. Whitening is booked as its own visit afterwards.
We are at 34669 US Hwy 19 N in Palm Harbor, FL 34684, and we see patients age seven and up. If you have a younger child, call and we’ll point you to a good local pediatric dentist. Directions, hours, and the intake paperwork are on our contact page and in patient forms, and you can read more about Dr. Snyder on the about page.
Book a Visit
Brighter in one visit.
About an hour in the chair, and your first Smile Perfected whitening visit is $150.
Prefer to call? (727) 502-6667
Reviewed by Dr. Rita Snyder, DMD, Harborview Dental Care. Last reviewed