What Makes the Biggest Difference Between Brushing Your Teeth & Brushing Them Well?

When it comes to oral hygiene, dentists agree on a lot of things: Brush regularly. Clean between your teeth and along the gumline. Use a soft-bristled toothbrush.

But some things remain surprisingly unsettled, especially when it comes to toothbrushing. How long should you brush? Does a particular brushing pattern matter? How much toothpaste is ideal? How much pressure should you use? Does the amount of brush wear make a difference?

That’s what led a group of German researchers to come up with an interesting experiment. Rather than relying on surveys or questionnaires, they recorded the toothbrushing of 88 adults they had recruited for the study.

Then they watched the videos.

They studied and analyzed them. They noted which areas participants spent the most time on, how they moved the brush, how long they brushed, and how evenly that time was distributed throughout the mouth. Then they compared the behaviors with the amount of plaque that remained after brushing.

What emerged from that analysis was surprisingly simple:

The central finding of this study is that brushing time appears to be the most strongly associated behavioural factor of dental plaque removal, superseding brushing method, toothbrush condition, and dentifrice quantity in the multivariate model.

In simple English: Those who spent more time brushing individual areas of the mouth removed more plaque. Time was more important than the specific brushing method, the condition of the brush head, and the amount of toothpaste used.

The best results were seen among those who distributed their brushing time relatively evenly instead of brushing extra in some areas and rushing through others.

It seems common sense, really: A surface that gets more attention is likely to get cleaner than one that doesn’t. But if you’re like most people, you may not think too much about how much time you’re spending on each quadrant of your mouth. You follow habits. You brush the same way today as you did yesterday. You start in the same place every time. You move through your mouth in the same sequence. You probably spend more time on the front teeth you can see, the chewing surfaces, and the outward-facing sides of your teeth.

Often, you may not even be thinking about brushing at all. You may be thinking of work, school, dinner plans, or the long list of things waiting for you once you finish brushing.

In other words, brushing is often a thing that happens on autopilot — which is probably one reason why so many studies have shown that powered toothbrushes tend to perform better than manual brushes. It’s not because powered brushes are magic. It’s because they help cover for the tendency to not think about brushing while brushing.

With a manual toothbrush, you create every cleaning motion. You determine the pressure, the speed, the duration, and how evenly your attention is distributed throughout the four quadrants of your mouth.

A powered brush still needs to be guided from tooth to tooth, of course, but the cleaning motion is generated for you. That frees you to focus more on placement, coverage, and making sure every part of your mouth gets equal time.

Many powered brushes include features designed to reinforce good habits. Built-in timers ensure that you brush long enough. Quadrant timers encourage you to distribute that time evenly. Some models have pressure sensors that let you know when you’re brushing too hard or aggressively.

While the German researchers may not have settled every remaining question about optimal brushing, their work does reinforce something important about effective home care: It deserves and requires your attention — precisely because brushing is one of the most familiar things we do.