Abstract This study aimed at assessing the relationship between dental pain and the reason for using dental services and oral health quality of life in people aged 50 to 74 years in southern Brazil. A cross-sectional population-based study was conducted with 720 individuals aged 50 to 74 years, living in three health districts in the city of Porto Alegre. Dental impacts on daily life and sociodemographic data were assessed using structured interviews. The Oral Impacts on Daily Performance - OIDP instrument was used to measure oral impacts. The information was analyzed by Poisson regression with robust variance adjustment, taking into account cluster sampling. Dental pain was present in 32.5% of those reporting an oral impact on their daily activities. Dental pain most frequently affected talking (37.6%), cleaning teeth and gums (37.0%) and enjoying the companionship of people (36.5%). After adjustments to the multivariate analysis, the reason for dental visits due to dental pain was found to have a high impact on daily activities [RP 1.68 (1.11 - 2.54].