Once tartar has formed on your teeth, you cannot remove it at home. Tartar (also called calculus) is hardened dental plaque that bonds to tooth enamel, and it requires professional tools to safely scrape away. What you can do at home is prevent new tartar from forming and slow its buildup between dental visits. Here’s how both sides of that equation work.
Why You Can’t Remove Tartar Yourself
Tartar starts as plaque, the soft, sticky film of bacteria that coats your teeth throughout the day. Left undisturbed, plaque can begin hardening into calcite crystite in as few as four to eight hours, though full mineralization typically takes 10 to 12 days. Once that process is complete, the deposit is rock-hard and chemically bonded to your tooth surface. No amount of brushing, scraping, or rinsing will break that bond safely.
You may have seen dental scaling tools sold online for home use. Using these is risky. Without training, you can scratch your enamel (causing lasting sensitivity), damage gum tissue (leading to gum recession that exposes sensitive roots), injure your cheeks or tongue, and even push tartar beneath the gumline, where it can trigger infections or gum abscesses. The money saved isn’t worth the potential damage.
What Happens at a Professional Cleaning
A standard dental cleaning handles tartar that sits above the gumline. Your hygienist uses hand scalers or ultrasonic instruments that vibrate at high frequency to chip calculus off tooth surfaces without harming enamel. For most people, this twice-yearly cleaning is enough to keep tartar under control.
If tartar has already crept below the gumline, your dentist may recommend a deeper procedure called scaling and root planing. This works like a regular cleaning but reaches further beneath the gums. Scaling removes plaque and tartar from below the gumline, while root planing smooths the tooth root surfaces so gum tissue can reattach more easily. It’s typically done with local numbing and may be split across two visits, one side of the mouth at a time. Some soreness and sensitivity afterward is normal and usually fades within a week.
Preventing Tartar Before It Forms
Since tartar is just plaque that was left alone long enough to harden, prevention comes down to disrupting plaque before it mineralizes. That window can be surprisingly short, so consistency matters more than intensity.
Brush twice a day for two full minutes, angling bristles toward the gumline where plaque accumulates most. Electric toothbrushes have a measurable edge here: a large Cochrane review found they achieve about 21% greater plaque reduction and 11% greater gingivitis reduction compared to manual brushing over periods longer than three months. If you already own one, use it. If not, a manual brush used properly still does a solid job.
Floss daily. Tartar loves to build up between teeth and just below the gumline, both places your toothbrush can’t reach well. Flossing breaks up the plaque colonies hiding in those gaps. Water flossers are a reasonable alternative if traditional floss feels difficult to use consistently.
Tartar-Control Toothpaste
Not all toothpastes are equal when it comes to tartar prevention. Look for products labeled “tartar control,” which contain ingredients that slow the crystallization of plaque into calculus. The most common active agents are zinc salts (particularly zinc citrate) and pyrophosphates. Zinc salts inhibit crystal formation and have been shown in clinical trials to significantly reduce and even prevent calculus formation compared to regular toothpaste. Pyrophosphates work through a similar mineral-inhibition pathway.
One ingredient worth noting is sodium hexametaphosphate, a type of polypyrophosphate that targets plaque calcification. In clinical studies, toothpastes containing it reduced tartar by up to 55% compared to regular formulas. You’ll find these compounds in widely available brands, so check the active ingredients list rather than relying on marketing claims alone.
Baking Soda as a Supplement
Baking soda toothpastes have genuine plaque-fighting properties, not just folk-remedy appeal. Published research in the Journal of the American Dental Association found that baking soda has significant bactericidal activity against oral pathogens and disrupts the biofilm that eventually becomes tartar. Clinical studies lasting three to six months showed measurable improvements in gum health when participants used baking soda dentifrices compared to placebos.
One practical advantage: baking soda is softer than most other toothpaste abrasives. Its hardness is roughly equivalent to dentin itself and lower than enamel, meaning it’s less likely to scratch tooth surfaces than ingredients like calcium carbonate or calcium pyrophosphate. That said, baking soda prevents plaque from hardening. It won’t dissolve tartar that’s already there.
What Tartar Does if You Ignore It
Tartar isn’t just a cosmetic problem. Its rough, porous surface gives bacteria an ideal place to colonize, right against your gums. This triggers inflammation: first gingivitis (red, swollen gums that bleed when you brush), then potentially periodontitis, a deeper infection that destroys the bone supporting your teeth. Periodontitis is the leading cause of tooth loss in adults.
The consequences may reach beyond your mouth. Chronic oral inflammation appears to increase levels of inflammatory markers in the bloodstream, potentially adding to the body’s overall burden of disease. The mouth can also serve as a reservoir for bacteria that enter the bloodstream and affect distant organs. Significant associations have been established between poor oral health and cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dementia, and rheumatoid arthritis, among other conditions. The relationship with diabetes is particularly notable because it runs both directions: high blood sugar worsens gum disease, and active gum disease makes blood sugar harder to control.
It’s worth noting that these are associations, not confirmed cause-and-effect relationships. But the pattern is consistent enough across studies that keeping tartar in check is worth treating as a whole-body health investment, not just a teeth issue.
A Realistic Prevention Routine
If you’re prone to heavy tartar buildup, some of that is genetic. People vary in their saliva chemistry, and some simply mineralize plaque faster than others. You can’t change your biology, but you can shorten the window plaque has to harden. A practical routine looks like this:
- Brush twice daily with a tartar-control or baking soda toothpaste, spending a full two minutes and paying extra attention to the inside surfaces of your lower front teeth and the outside surfaces of your upper molars, both common tartar hotspots.
- Floss once daily, focusing on getting slightly below the gumline rather than just snapping floss between teeth.
- Use an antiseptic mouthwash to reduce the bacterial load in areas your brush and floss miss.
- Get professional cleanings every six months, or every three to four months if your dentist recommends it based on your buildup rate.
The core principle is simple: plaque you remove today can’t become the tartar you’ll need a dental visit to fix tomorrow. The more consistently you disrupt it, the less there is to harden.