Does turmeric whiten teeth? What the studies show

Can you use turmeric to whiten teeth?

No, as far as we could find. The American Dental Association (ADA) sees no reliable scientific evidence on its consumer site that turmeric whitens teeth, and we found no clinical trial that measured tooth color after brushing with turmeric or a turmeric toothpaste: everything below comes from lab studies.

The most thorough one was published in 2022 in the Brazilian Dental Journal. Its authors machine-brushed pieces of cow enamel, 14 per group, for the equivalent of 14 and then 30 days, with a paste of store-bought turmeric powder mixed with water, with charcoal, with banana peel or with a regular toothpaste; a last group received a 16% carbamide peroxide gel, 4 hours a day for 14 days. Only that gel whitened more than the toothpaste. With turmeric, the color change did not differ from that of the regular toothpaste, at 14 or at 30 days.

Turmeric even started out the other way: at 14 days, the enamel had turned yellower and its whiteness index had dropped, unlike the group brushed with toothpaste. By 30 days that yellow had faded and the whiteness index was above its starting value, as the toothpaste group’s had been at 14 days; the authors think the pigment barely gets into enamel, and that continued brushing removed the stain of the first weeks. Their conclusion: the natural products tested showed no whitening efficacy, however long they were used.

The few favorable reports are weak. A 2024 conference abstract calls a curcumin gel “superior” based on a visual reading with a shade guide, and gives no figures. An unpublished 2020 thesis, on 27 coffee-stained teeth, reports a color change with curcumin, but its abstract does not say in which direction, and no group was left untreated for comparison.

In a 2022 study on 30 extracted human incisors, turmeric extract powder taken from dietary supplement capsules was mixed into 3% or 6% hydrogen peroxide: the teeth got lighter, but no group received peroxide alone, and the authors credit the peroxide for the effect, suggesting only that curcumin “might optimize” it. Finally, a 2023 study often cited on the subject settles nothing: its methods and its tables contradict each other on whether turmeric was tested at all.

References: [1] ADA MouthHealthy (natural whitening) · [2] Maciel et al. (2022) · [6] Allal et al. (2024) · [7] Mofreh (2020) · [8] Salem et al. (2022) · [9] Abidia et al. (2023)

Does turmeric stain teeth yellow?

Natural enamel, a little, according to lab studies, and not lastingly in the only one that followed brushing over time: in the 2022 Brazilian study, the turmeric paste turned cow enamel yellower after the equivalent of 14 days, and that yellow then faded by 30 days.

In 2025, pieces of cow enamel were soaked for seven days in eight undiluted sauces. Curry was one of the two that stained least, significantly less than ketchup, which the authors put down to a weak interaction between curcumin and enamel, though a few curry samples were past the color difference judged acceptable.

Another 2025 study, on 60 extracted human teeth, measured not color but the pigment that could be extracted from the enamel after seven days of exposure. Intact enamel held less turmeric pigment than coffee pigment, 5.1 versus 8.3 µg/mL, and more than twice as much turmeric, 12.7 µg/mL, when it had just been treated with 10% hydrogen peroxide. The study has inconsistencies in its methods. What to eat right after whitening is covered in our guide to eating after teeth whitening.

In France, the health site Allodocteurs wrote in 2024 that long use of turmeric could leave a stain, without citing a study or a dentist. For other sources of stain, see the foods and drinks that stain teeth.

References: [2] Maciel et al. (2022) · [10] Kim et al. (2025) · [11] Kandalkar et al. (2025) · [12] Allodocteurs (2024)

Does turmeric stain crowns, veneers, fillings and aligners?

Resins, yes, and that is where lab studies find the largest differences. The composite resins used for veneers and repairs, denture teeth and the plastic of clear aligners took up turmeric’s yellow far more than enamel did, and more than coffee in the three studies that compared them. The table gives the measured color difference, ΔE: the higher it is, the larger the change.

Contact time matters. In these studies, samples soaked continuously for hours or days. At the same concentration as the most striking study, but for three hours a day with artificial saliva the rest of the time, a composite resin barely changed over 28 days, hardly more than in water. In 2024, a study of 240 samples also found that single-shade composites stained more in turmeric than multi-shade ones.

With pure curcumin dissolved in alcohol, a 2025 study saw every aligner tested change color markedly within 12 hours; the authors note that the alcohol may also have affected the plastic.

Once stained, resin is hard to bring back. In the veneering resin study, neither re-polishing nor a 40% hydrogen peroxide in-office gel brought the turmeric-stained resin back to its original color: the remaining difference was 37.3 after polishing and 20.4 after the gel, according to the study’s tables, even though its conclusion says polishing did better. The NHS, the UK health service, notes that whitening only works on natural teeth.

We found no study of turmeric on the ceramic of crowns.

References: [13] Dabaghi Tabriz et al. (2025) · [14] Yeslam and Bakhsh (2025) · [15] Venkatasubramanian et al. (2022) · [16] Chitragar et al. (2025) · [17] Geethanjali et al. (2024) · [18] Checchi et al. (2024) · [19] He et al. (2025) · [20] NHS

Is turmeric bad for your teeth?

For enamel, the plain powder was not harsh in the only study that measured it. Brushed for the equivalent of about a year on acrylic blocks, the turmeric paste in the Brazilian study removed 3.33 mg of material, against 13.89 mg for a regular toothpaste and 22.67 mg for charcoal: the smallest loss of the products tested, and a low abrasivity by the authors’ classification. On enamel, it did not change roughness, unlike the toothpaste and charcoal, but it did reduce gloss. We found no other measurement of its abrasivity.

The risks come mostly from what gets added to it. The ADA’s consumer site warns that an overly abrasive material can make teeth look more yellow, and that acidic fruit and vinegar, scrubbed on teeth or left in contact with them, can wear away enamel. If a mix contains baking soda or lemon, what the studies say about those ingredients is in our guide to whitening teeth naturally.

The best-documented risk is cosmetic: in the lab, turmeric stained composite resins and aligners far more than enamel, which held on to little of it.

This guide covers tooth color only. Turmeric supplements are a matter for your doctor or pharmacist; for your gums, that’s one for a dentist to look at.

References: [1] ADA MouthHealthy (natural whitening) · [2] Maciel et al. (2022) · [10] Kim et al. (2025) · [13] Dabaghi Tabriz et al. (2025) · [15] Venkatasubramanian et al. (2022)

Does turmeric toothpaste whiten teeth?

In the lab studies we found, none did. In 2021, on 80 cow teeth, 20 per group, that had not been stained first, three “natural” toothpastes, one of them based on turmeric, changed color no more than a regular toothpaste; the turmeric one even produced the smallest change.

In 2025, 100 tea-stained blocks of cow enamel were brushed with nine toothpastes, two of them with turmeric extract, or with artificial saliva alone. The whiteness index did not differ between any of the groups, and it fell with every toothpaste: the authors conclude that none had a whitening effect. Enamel brushed with the turmeric, clove and tea tree paste even lost the most surface hardness, although the authors’ conclusion reports none.

In 2021, a team in Egypt tested a turmeric-extract toothpaste, which also contained baking soda, on five extracted human premolars, with simulated brushing the authors equate to six months of use. The color changed visibly (ΔE of about 5), but toward yellower and darker, while a commercial whitening toothpaste lightened teeth clearly (ΔE of 13.2); on so few teeth, those shifts in lightness and yellowness were not significant. The authors advise against turmeric in toothpastes and whitening products.

Turmeric is also used as a dye. In the version of the EU cosmetics regulation retained in UK law, curcumins (CI 75300) are on the list of allowed colorants, with no concentration limit or restriction on use, provided they meet the purity criteria of the food color E 100. On an ingredient list, CI 75300 therefore names a yellow colorant.

An online review is not a measurement, and we found no clinical trial of a turmeric toothpaste on tooth color. For choosing a toothpaste, the UFSBD, the French oral health association, advises asking a dentist, especially when teeth are sensitive.

References: [3] Dutra et al. (2021) · [4] Carneiro et al. (2025) · [5] El Bishbishy et al. (2021) · [21] Regulation 1223/2009, Annex IV (UK) · [22] UFSBD

Why do some reviews say turmeric whitened their teeth?

We found no study that explains it, but known effects can play a part. First, what else goes in: baking soda removes surface stain in toothpastes, according to a 2017 review published in a supplement sponsored by a maker of such toothpastes. When a turmeric mix contains it, whatever removes stain is not necessarily the turmeric.

Then timing: in the Brazilian study, enamel turned yellower during the first weeks of brushing with turmeric, then, by 30 days, that yellow had faded and the whiteness index stood above its starting value, though the color change still did not differ from that of a regular toothpaste. A lighter look after a yellow phase does not show that turmeric whitens.

The state of the teeth matters too: teeth kept dry for 30 minutes look lighter, and in one clinical study, many teeth were still off their usual color after 30 minutes of rehydration.

Then there is the photo. In a 2025 pilot study, the color of the same teeth read from photos varied with the lighting, and strayed furthest from the reference measurement under an LED ceiling light; see what light changes in a picture. We found no study of a contrast effect between leftover yellow powder and the teeth. A before and after only tells you something if both photos are taken the same way.

References: [2] Maciel et al. (2022) · [23] Li (2017) · [24] Burki et al. (2013) · [25] Hatırlı et al. (2021) · [26] Pundir et al. (2025)

What actually lightens teeth, and how can you check?

For the tooth’s own color, the trials tested peroxide. Toothpastes act mainly on surface stains and do not significantly change the tooth’s own color, the ADA explains; changing it takes a chemical reaction, most often with hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide. Across 71 trials, the 2018 Cochrane review found that peroxide home products whitened teeth more than a placebo, with low to very low certainty.

In the EU, oral products sold to consumers, whitening ones included, may contain or release at most 0.1% hydrogen peroxide; products from 0.1 to 6% may be sold only to dentists, for adults, under Regulation (EU) No 344/2013. The options, from whitening strips to the dentist’s chair, are compared in our guide to making teeth whiter.

To tell whether anything changed, compare like with like: photos taken with the same phone, in the same room and light, with the same smile, and never just after your teeth have dried out.

Enamel’s guided scan is taken in a dim room, lit only by the iPhone screen; it is measured on the iPhone, and your shade is placed on a 16-step scale. Your check-ins, weekly or every two weeks, are compared with your day 0 reference scan, and a change is named only when it is clear. Enamel sells nothing and names no brand.

References: [27] ADA (2022) · [28] Cochrane (2018) · [29] Règlement (UE) 344/2013