Unlike many cosmetic products there are no trade secrets associated with teeth whitening. All products sold for this purpose use the bleaching process to whiten teeth, and all of them use one of two hydrogen peroxide chemical formulas to provide the bleaching action. Some companies have proprietary lights or bleaching activators included in their systems, but the bleaching process remains the same. Reviewing teeth whitening products is really just a discussion of how well products work and to what degree they meet the advertised mark.
There is a scale of teeth whitening that defines the whitening factor in terms of “shades;” that is, the number of shades lighter or closer to white a product can achieve with your teeth. The cosmetic dentistry whitening systems that dentists use are capable of making your teeth nine to ten shades lighter because they use powerful concentrates of bleach and in many cases use light to enhance and hasten the bleaching process.
These systems produce the most radical change achievable in a single-session teeth whitening procedure. They are all going to be expensive; whether they are worth the cost or not is really a personal decision. The consumer reviews on these products usually report success in the whitening procedure; the principal issue with fast, powerful professional teeth whitening is the substantial pain and sensitivity that can develop during and after the procedure.
Some of the at home teeth whitening procedures make guarantees of achieving five or six shades lighter for your teeth. Guarantees are somewhat questionable because these products work well for some people and not well for others. Home systems can’t reach the deep stains that impact some teeth due to disease or the use of certain medications such as tetracycline.
The strips that various companies manufacture usually provide a lightening effect of perhaps three shades, which is fine if you’re not starting with heavily stained teeth. More progress may come with extended use. Success for the over the counter whitening kits that use mouth trays is really dependent on how well the trays provided fit over your teeth.
Many dentists believe that the most effective, longest lasting teeth whitening procedure is one that uses custom mouth trays made by your dentist, to be employed in at-home bleaching sessions using gel also provided by the dentist. This combines professional products with a slow, thorough process that bleaches over an extended period of one to two weeks. This may also be a process that many people have neither the time nor the discipline to adopt. In this situation, reviews are usually more about the process than the product.