How to remove toothpaste stains

Use a blunt object (like the edge of a spoon or a credit card) to carefully remove any excess toothpaste from the garment. Try to get under the blob and lift it up, rather than scraping it as you could make the toothpaste stain bigger. 

Take a damp cloth and gently blot the area to get as much toothpaste off as possible. Dip the cloth in liquid detergent and work into the stain. Simply wash the garment as you normally would once you’ve completed these steps. 

Gel toothpaste might look cool with its translucent green or blue colouring, but this dye is a lot less fun when it gets on your favourite white shirt. Simply follow the same instructions as written above for regular toothpaste. Once the item of clothing is finished in the washing machine, hang it out to dry in the sun. This will help to bleach the stain and get your garment sparkly white again.

Whitening toothpastes contain a mild bleaching agent to get your pearly whites sparkling. Since there’s bleach involved, you can imagine what happens if it lands on a dark top, for example. Deal with it as quickly as possible because once your garment is bleached, there’s no coming back. This also involves the same steps as with regular toothpaste, but the difference is that you should act fast before the bleach has time to act.

These toothpaste removal methods cannot be used on clothes that are labelled as dry clean only since they should not come into contact with water. Instead, carefully remove any large blobs of toothpaste with a dull knife or spoon to prevent the paste from soaking deeper into the fabric. Do not rub the stain into the fabric. If you don't have time to take the clothing to the dry cleaner, there are dry cleaning stain removal products that can be used instead. 

If you’ve just run out of washing powder and need a quick fix so your clothes aren’t permanently stained, there are other ways to get toothpaste stains out according to many online sources.

Scrape off as much of the toothpaste as you can and then use a clean cloth to rub the washing up liquid onto the stain (a teaspoon of washing up liquid in a glass of water should be more than enough). 

Cut a lemon in half and rub the pulp side on the toothpaste for about 60 seconds. You could go one step further and add some baking soda to the mix. It’ll start to fizz and then end up with a paste-like consistency that you can then rub into the stain. 

Either apply white vinegar directly to the stain (letting it soak in for around 60 seconds) or wash the garment in the washing machine along with a cup of vinegar. Vinegar can also be used for pre-treating toothpaste stains. 

Now you know how to remove toothpaste stains, you might want to prepare yourself in case any other surprise stains should occur. Our other stain-related articles will be useful for this, such as how to get rid of honey stains, how to remove sweat stains and how to remove sticker residue.