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Having braces can be tough enough! 

If you’re doing your best to take the best care of your teeth you can, you don’t need the extra challenges of trying to thread regular floss through your brackets. 

The good news is that there are a lot of really good options out there now for people with braces to keep their oral health on point. (It’s not just the crappy unwaxed floss I remember anymore!) 

In this post: the best, American Dental Association-approved options for making sure you keep good oral hygiene. When your braces come off, you want to make sure your teeth look strong and healthy! 

Why floss? 

Okay, look, I know you probably know this already, but you might not know all of it, so hear me out. 

Leaving food particles between your teeth can lead to gum disease and tooth decay. It only takes 24-48 hours for plaque on your teeth to begin to calcify. So if you’re not flossing every day, you can get hardened plaque damaging your teeth. 

And in the last few years, a lot of pretty scary information has come out linking periodontal disease (that’s gum disease) and even gingivitis to serious health problems. There are links to heart disease, diabetes, and even dementia. So, if you aren’t motivated by having a bright white smile, commit to an oral hygiene routine for your long-term health! 

In addition: most (not all) people who get traditional braces are on the younger side. So if you’re a teenager and you can’t imagine ever getting old, bear in mind that you can also get bone loss in your mouth and jaw, leading your teeth to fall out. I know tooth loss is not on anyone’s pre-prom checklist. 

Traditional vs. nontraditional braces

If you are using an Invisalign-style removable braces, you don’t really need to worry about this! For any of the types of braces you can just take out, pop out your aligner to brush and floss. Don’t forget to clean your aligner with the cleaning crystals, too, or you’re just putting the same bacteria back into your mouth. 

(If you forgot your cleaning crystals like my husband always does, a toothbrush and toothpaste can clean your aligner too. His dental hygienist told him not to use mouthwash to clean his aligner!) 

So for those types of removable braces, you don’t really need any special floss at all. If you can’t bear the idea of flossing, check out my post on the best floss alternatives: Best Alternative to Flossing If You Hate To Floss)

Best floss for braces

If you’re working with traditional metal braces (like I was), there are a lot of different ways to keep up your regular flossing. I gotta be real with you, there are several okay options and two excellent options in this list. I’m going to start with the best ones (in my opinion, of course). 

My favorite floss options for braces

Oral B Superfloss

The GOAT and my personal preferences! The Oral-B super floss is a great solution for all the little nooks and crannies that come up with braces!

Each strand of superfloss has a stiff ends of the floss that makes it easy to get it through your teeth from the front. Then, there’s a thick, spongy part that helps to reach places that string floss might not. It will fill up some of the larger gaps and spaces that exist when we have braces. Between the thick part and the thin part, the floss addresses basically every part of your mouth. You’ll get the tight spaces and the larger ones. 

It’s a really good option for people who are looking for one step, because it’s going to get all the food debris and really fill the whole space between teeth at the gum line. 

The one drawback to this type of floss is that the thick, spongy part will fray and get a little fuzzy if you drag it over the brackets to your braces. It doesn’t prevent it from working, but it can feel a little weird. If sensory things like that bother you, this might be one to skip (or just avoid the brackets if it bugs you.)

Plackers Orthopicks

My love of floss picks is already well-documented on this blog: Waterpik vs. Flossing – What to Use When For Perfect Teeth. I use the Plackers double-strand flossers now. But for people with braces, this is the best floss pick, and the closest you can get to traditional flossing.

​If you look at the shape of it in the little picture above, you’ll see that one side of the curve is much narrower than the other. That narrow side fits in between your teeth and your braces wire. So you can wiggle the floss in between your teeth from above, just like the usual flossing process. 

If you hate using a threading tooth floss like the Superfloss and you want orthodontic flossers that feel mostly like regular flossers, this is a good way to go. 

It also has a little plastic tool on the end that you can use like a pick? I guess that’s helpful if you want to keep it in a purse or backpack. 

The drawback to this is that, depending on your age or your child’s age, there might be a little bit of a learning curve to using it. For young children (kids get braces so young these days!) it might be hard to get the floss through the gap in exactly the right spot so that the narrow end of the flosser gets inside the braces wire. And hitting the braces wire with the flosser can hurt a little bit. But once you’re used to it, this is a fast way to floss. 

Water flossers

I use a water flosser and I like it! I actually got my first one, a Waterpik water flosser, when I got braces. It shoots a steady stream of water that basically powerwashes the tartar off your teeth. 

So, the American Dental Association has basically approved water flossers as being nearly as good as flossing. And if you’re someone who just does not or will not floss, but you’ll use a waterpik, that’s fine. It’s so, so much better than nothing! 

But for me: I got obsessed with oral hygiene a few years ago when I started struggling with bad breath, and I found that just using a water flosser wasn’t good enough to manage my breath issues. I had to use regular dental floss and proper flossing techniques, or the bacteria started repopulating. 

However: a water flosser is a great addition and I totally recommend it as part of your oral care routine! For people with braces, you can’t really realistically floss every inch of your mouth, so a water flosser does come in and clean some additional places. 

A water flosser is an especially good choice on a day where you have sugary drinks or sugary foods! Get all that stuff out of your mouth before bed. 

So, I actually buy a cheap water flosser and replace it every year. I had an old (expensive) one that had mold growing in it and I was traumatized. So here’s the one I buy: 

Every year I remember to buy a new one by ordering it to go in my Christmas stocking. And after I use it, I dump out the water reserve, run the flosser until the tubes are empty, and let it dry open. 

Other options for flossing with braces

So, you do have some other options for flossing with braces that still might be the right choice for some people! 

If you have an existing type of floss that you really like, a floss threader can help you keep using it! You would cut a length of your favorite dental floss, put it through the loop of the threader, and thread it through your teeth from the front. 

(If you have a favorite floss, please tell me what it is in the comments because I am so curious!)

​Or maybe you need a certain type of floss. An orthodontic floss threader can work for that. 

These are the most polarizing item in existence. 

I am a hater. I am so sorry. Other people love these, and you should give them a try if you think you might love them. They are a great tool in theory, and some people like the way that they feel. (My college roommate compared, positively, it to cleaning her ears.)

And, look, they are going to scrub you out in those hard to reach areas. It’s a great concept. But for me, even though I am so serious about dental hygiene, I could not do it. I don’t think I have super sensitive gums, either. I just find the feeling so weird. 

Final thoughts

I hope this has been helpful! 

Orthodontic treatment like braces and palate spreaders feel like they’re going to last forever when they’re in. But they’re going to come off! And you can give yourself the gift of great health and a great smile when they do.