Your first instinct might be a good old fashioned solution of baking soda and vinegar. If so, you’re certainly heading in the right direction. Baking soda and vinegar are all-natural, non-toxic, and totally safe for human consumption. This leads many to believe that a baking soda-vinegar solution is the obvious choice if you’re trying to figure out how to clean an Invisalign retainer.
But there’s only one problem: baking soda is actually surprisingly abrasive and can scratch the surface of your expensive Invisalign retainer. Not only can these scratches cause your retainer to deteriorate at a faster rate, but they can also allow bacteria to build up in the bumps and grooves.
Vinegar is also problematic because it can stain the surface of your retainer – especially when it’s combined with baking soda. Along with other all-natural solutions like lemon, vinegar has a tendency to stick to your retainer.
In addition, these all-natural solutions are simply inconvenient. Let’s face it – no one wants to spend 20 minutes painstakingly mixing up and applying a baking soda solution before bed. It takes enough time to clean our teeth and floss, and the last thing we need is another time-consuming addition to our nighttime routine. Worse still, you often need to soak your Invisalign in this all-natural solution for up to five hours, forcing you to plan ahead with near-impossible organizational skills.