Dopers, can you recommend (or advise against) any teeth-whitening kits? I’d appreciate it if you’d share your experiences bleaching your teeth.
Do I have to buy a kit? Is it possible to just buy the ingredients and mix them up myself and apply the mixture? If a kit is required, which brands work best? Which to avoid?
Thanks!
I would definitely buy a kit. I have used a few different ones (and kinds). You can try Crest White Strips (get the premium kind I hear). They are easy to use and probably won’t cause any problems. The kind with the gel and mouthpiece with an included light seemed more powerful to me and it is easy as well. The first one I got was some infomercial crap on the CVS clearance rack. It worked fine as did the name brand ones I bought later.
You can use them a few times a day if you are aggressive but you have to watch out for tooth and gum sensitivity. You will start seeing results in just a couple of days but you may have to use them off and on for good depending on your teeth and what goes in your mouth.
I would just go to the pharmacy and look at the name brand stuff. I thought the gel/mouthpiece/light combo worked the fastest but the light might just be a gimmick (sure makes you feel like a DIY dentist through). The strips are a good way to get acquainted with those types of products if you just want to experiment. Grey stains won’t bleach nearly as well as yellowy ones (the most common type).
I also used the Crest White Strips and thought they worked pretty well.
Sometime after that, I shelled out the big bucks to the dentist to get the pharmaceutical grade stuff*, and difference was enormous. (And IMHO, my resulting teeth are not “scary movie actor white,” they’re “normal person white.”)
I guess it depends on how much you think your teeth need to be whitened. If it’s moderate, then I think the Crest strips are great. If you try them, and still think you want to go whiter, you will hit a wall with the drugstore products and might think about the dentist.
*I don’t really know if it’s pharmaceutical grade, but they certainly price it that way. If anyone has the Crest strips and wants to compare active ingredients, I’ll dig out my dentist-supplied whitening gel.
I’d love to hear from anyone who had their teeth whitened at the dentist about how much it costs. Childhood toothbrush neglect left my teeth kinda funky.
Sorry that I don’t have dentist’s office experience, but - as a smoker and heavy coffee drinker I can’t recommend Ionic White enough. It’s a combination of gels that you put in a blue light mouthtray.
I initially bought some off an eBay site - 2 kits for like $30. It worked fabulously. I got tons of compliments - even from my mom!!
I’ve tried just about every stinkin’ product there is - the Whitestrips of every brand, all of the toothpastes - and this is the only product that I continue to use after more than two years. That’s quite telling in and of itself.
I’m a beauty product addict, and believe me when I say that I haven’t found anything that works better. I’m a marketer’s dream, honestly. I WANT TO believe every stinkin’ thing in every commercial in my quest to look 25 again, pretty impossible as I’m 41, but, it’s a neverending process, and it’s pretty harmless, so such is life.
Good luck!
I haven’t done it myself, but my dentist’s office offers something called BriteSmile, which costs about $500. It does work very well - I’ve seen the results. And it only takes about an hour. They put gel on your teeth and then use a laser to energize the gel.
I have used RapidWhite - a tray and mixer kind of deal - and the Crest strips, as well as the Wal-Mart version of the crest strips. I hate the trays. Too messy for me. I really like the strips. I tried the Oral B strips but they were so stiff and I just didn’t like the way they folded (picky, I know). I liked the taste of crest the best, but the generic is OK, especially for saving about $15.
I used my twice a day for 7 days, but it makes my teeth super sensitive so you do have to watch that. You can go to once a day for 14 days. Same results, just takes a little longer. I recommend getting some Sensodyne or something like that to go with it. As someone that has never had sensitive teeth, it was definitely weird.
Hey, longtime lurker, I can believe it is this boring topic that made me come out of the shadows! Anyway, I have tried EVERYTHING, and basically nothing worked enough. The bleaching gels you get from a dentist are a good bet, but you have to keep up with it, and I just plain forget. I did Zoom whitening, where they keep your mouth open with this medieval torture trap thing and put the gel on, like someone else said about BrightSmile (I think they are the same thing). Anyway, you sit there for an hour and a half, and they basically dry out your teeth while a big blue light is shining in your face. Afterwards, my teeth were very sensitive to anything hot or cold for the next two weeks, and while they looked whiter, it wasn’t worth the $500.
In the end I got porcelain veneers. They are expensive, but I have never been happier with my teeth, and feel that they are worth every penny. I wouldn’t bother with that infomercial contraption with the light or Whitestrips (I’ve never heard of Ionic White), but do suggest going to your dentist and getting those trays made. He can give you much stronger gel than you can buy at a store.
Anyway, hello! And if I decide to stick around, you’ll probably catch me talking about American Idol, tex-mex or indie music and movies.
Do the veneers get discolored as well like light colored mugs used for coffee/tea can?
I have a fierce coffee habit, so this is a topic that I’m interested in.
Yes, veneers do eventually get discolored, and according to the Crest Whitestrips box–Crest Whitestrips do NOT whiten porcelain.
I use one box of Crest Whitestrips Premium every year, and am very happy with them. For me, the yearly treatment pretty much un-does a year’s worth of coffee and tea. The only downside is that, as mentioned upthread, they make your teeth sensitive for the week you’re using them.
My dentist said that they will not stain, since it’s not a porous surface. He mentioned nothing of me stopping coffee and cigarettes, of which he knows I like both very much. And plus, mugs usually get discolored because it’s sitting in there. Maybe if you just sit around holding a big mouthful of coffee in your mouth for hours on end something could discolor, but I doubt you do that!
Sorry for the double post, I didn’t know I couldn’t edit. I wanted to mention that nothing ever worked on my teeth due to them having very thin enamel in the first place, some people are lucky and can use over the counter products, I just wasn’t blessed with that.
I was told that they wouldn’t stain, and that was a big perk about them, but like Sattua said, nothing will whiten the porcelain, so it’s recommended to get them a little lighter than you want, and catch your other teeth up with the bleaching trays.
None of the kits whiten bridges, caps etc.
I used Whitestrips and the difference was noticeable.
My dentist offers both the laser whitening system (where they shine a light on your teeth to activate the whitener) and the gel that you do at home. They both cost about the same. I go to an expensive dentist (long story, but I’ve had a lot of dental problems and tried a lot of dentists and I can’t give up the guy who does the best work). My dentist charges (insane amount of money that I’m too embarrassed to admit in public) but I think a more average cost is about $500.
He recommended the gel over the light for financial reasons, he felt they were very equal in terms of results. For the light, you pay your money and get the treatment and it whitens your teeth. If you want to go back after a few years, you pay your money again, in full.
With the gel, the bulk of the cost is for making a mold of your teeth and then creating custom trays to hold the gel. You sleep with the gel trays in your mouth for two weeks. A few years later, if you want more gel, you already own your trays and you can buy the gel treatment for about $50. Of course, you will not be able to use the trays again if you have some drastic dental work done in the meantime that would significantly change the shape of your teeth. Or, obviously, if you lose your trays.
Thank you, Dopers, for the recommendations.
Me, too. I haven’t tried the newest version yet, but if the original version is any indicator, I should be blinding people every time I open my mouth.