Teeth tartar, also called dental calculus, is hardened plaque that has mineralized on your tooth surfaces. It forms when the soft, sticky film of bacteria that naturally builds up on your teeth absorbs calcium and phosphorus from your saliva and solidifies into a rough, cement-like deposit. Unlike plaque, which you can brush away, tartar bonds firmly to enamel and can only be removed by a dental professional.
How Tartar Forms
The process starts with plaque, a colorless biofilm that begins colonizing your teeth within hours of brushing. In the first 18 hours, pioneer bacteria attach to the thin protein coating your saliva leaves on tooth surfaces. If this plaque stays undisturbed, it gradually matures over the next several days. Between four and seven days, more aggressive bacteria start to dominate, especially along the gum line where oxygen levels are lower.
At some point during this window, bacteria in the plaque trigger a spike in local calcium and phosphorus concentrations. These minerals crystallize within the biofilm, turning soft plaque into hard tartar. The final product is mostly dead bacteria that have become mineralized, mixed with small amounts of hardened proteins from your saliva. The mineral portion is made up of several forms of calcium phosphate, the same family of minerals found in your tooth enamel and bones.
This is why consistent daily brushing and flossing matter so much. Once plaque has been sitting undisturbed for several days and begins to calcify, no amount of brushing will remove it.
What Tartar Looks and Feels Like
Tartar that forms above the gum line typically appears as a yellowish or off-white crusty deposit, often building up along the inner surfaces of your lower front teeth and the outer surfaces of your upper molars. These spots are closest to your salivary glands, which supply the minerals that drive calcification. Over time, tartar can darken to brown or even black, especially if you drink coffee, tea, or red wine, or if you smoke.
Below the gum line, tartar tends to be darker (brown to black) because it picks up pigments from blood in inflamed gum tissue. You can’t see subgingival tartar yourself, but your dentist can detect it during an exam. If you run your tongue along your teeth and feel a rough, chalky texture that doesn’t go away with brushing, that’s likely tartar.
Why Tartar Causes Problems
Tartar itself is mostly inert mineral, but its rough, porous surface creates an ideal home for living bacteria to cling to and thrive. This makes it much harder to keep your teeth clean, even with diligent brushing. The bacterial colonies sheltered by tartar irritate your gums, leading to inflammation, redness, and bleeding when you brush. This early stage of gum disease is called gingivitis.
Left in place, tartar buildup can push the gum tissue away from the tooth, forming small pockets between the teeth and gums. Bacteria and food debris collect in these pockets, producing bad breath or a persistent unpleasant taste. As the pockets deepen, the infection can progress to periodontitis, a more serious form of gum disease that damages the bone supporting your teeth. Periodontitis is a leading cause of tooth loss in adults.
Connections to Broader Health
The consequences of chronic tartar buildup and periodontal disease extend beyond your mouth. Periodontal disease has been associated with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and liver disease, among other conditions. The relationship often runs in both directions. Diabetes, for example, makes gum disease worse, and untreated gum disease can make blood sugar harder to control.
The proposed mechanisms behind these links include bacteria from infected gums entering the bloodstream, chronic low-grade inflammation that affects other organ systems, and shifts in the immune response triggered by ongoing oral infection. None of this means tartar directly causes heart disease or dementia, but it does mean that keeping your mouth healthy is part of keeping your whole body healthy.
How Tartar Is Removed
Because tartar is chemite-bonded to your tooth surface, you cannot scrape it off at home safely or effectively. Your dentist or hygienist removes it during a professional cleaning using hand-held metal scalers or ultrasonic instruments that vibrate at high frequency to break the deposits loose. For tartar above the gum line, this is part of a routine cleaning and typically takes 30 to 60 minutes.
If tartar has accumulated below the gum line, you may need a deeper procedure called scaling and root planing. Your gums are numbed with local anesthesia, and the provider removes tartar from the tooth roots inside those gum pockets, then smooths the root surfaces so gum tissue can reattach more easily. Depending on the severity, this may be done in one visit or split across two to four appointments, treating one section of the mouth at a time. Some tenderness and sensitivity afterward is normal and usually resolves within a few days.
Preventing Tartar Buildup
The single most effective way to prevent tartar is to remove plaque before it has a chance to mineralize. That means brushing twice a day for two minutes and flossing once daily, paying extra attention to the areas where tartar tends to accumulate: behind your lower front teeth and around your upper molars.
Tartar-control toothpastes contain active ingredients, most commonly pyrophosphates, that interfere with the crystallization process. A systematic review of clinical trials found that these toothpastes significantly reduced tartar formation over three to six months compared to regular toothpaste. Formulas combining pyrophosphates with a copolymer showed the largest effect. These products won’t remove existing tartar, but they can slow new buildup between dental visits.
Electric toothbrushes, particularly those with oscillating or sonic action, tend to remove slightly more plaque than manual brushing, which translates to less raw material for tartar formation. An antiseptic mouthwash can also help reduce the bacterial load in your mouth, though it’s a supplement to brushing and flossing rather than a replacement.
Some people are simply more prone to tartar than others. Your saliva’s mineral content, its pH, and how quickly your mouth produces saliva all influence how fast plaque calcifies. If you tend to build up tartar quickly, your dentist may recommend cleanings every three to four months instead of the standard six.