At Home Teeth Whitening: Does it Really Work?

Ever since I was a little girl, my teeth have been one of my biggest insecurities. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college after I had saved up some money, that I decided to invest in my smile and try out Invisalign. Saying that I went a looongggg time hiding my teeth is the biggest understatement of the year. I went 19 years of my life doing everything I could to hide my teeth. My teeth still aren’t perfect but I am more confident in my smile now than I ever have been.

Fast forward a few years later (AKA 6 months ago) when I decided to start up this blog, putting my smile front and center for the world to see. Being a blogger requires me to be in front of a camera more than I am used to, something that 19 year old me would have gave a big heck no to. So, I figured there is no better time than now to take these pearls to the next level, right?

As someone who is always on the go, from working full time to blogging on the side, and having a dog that I swear is still stuck in his puppy body (SO much energy), there is only one way to get through each day. Coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. We all know that coffee is THE ruler of teeth staining. Needless to say, something had to give and it wasn’t going to be the coffee LOL.

I have tried plenty of other products, such as whitening strips or whitening pens, and they would work but never gave me the permanent results I was looking for.

So, you can only imagine my excitement when Smile Brilliant gifted me one of their at home teeth whitening systems. Smile Brilliant offers a custom fitted teeth whitening kit that offers you an at home experience that will get you the results of what your dentists can offer. The only difference is that it is a fraction of the price and you can do it all from your couch, yup! Sign me up!

My Experience

The whole process was SO easy from start to finish.

First, you order your kit based off of the level of your teeth staining and sensitivity. You will then receive a kit in the mail and will make your dental impressions. In the kit you will find:

Two impression trays to create your mold
Three sets of impression materials (one extra set in case you mess up!)
Prepaid postage to ship out your impressions to the lab
Three syringes of teeth whitening gel (equal to about 9 whitening sessions)
Three syringes of desensitizing gel (should be used even if your aren’t prone to sensitivity)

I myself chose to do the T3 NON-SENSITIVE SYSTEM, which is for light staining.

I have to say that the customer service at Smile Brilliant was so amazing! Making teeth impressions isn’t something most people have experience doing. If you have had braces or Invisalign in the past then you have experienced it before but it’s a totally different experience when you do it on your own.

Don’t be scared though, I promise that it is SUPER simple. All in all, it takes about 10-15 minutes and the kit comes with very detailed step by step instructions. No need to worry . However, there will be a lot of drooling involved so I recommend keeping lots of paper towels handy just in case, lol.

One thing I thought was really cool was that if you are unsure how they came out you can even email the company pictures of your impressions and they will make sure they were done correctly. I definitely took advantage of that because I knew that the results of my white teeth started with my trays being done correctly.

Once complete you will need to mail your impressions in to the lab to be created. I got my trays back in about 5 days and was able to start the whitening process that same day!

White teeth here we come!

The process is super simple. Each syringe in your kit is equal to about 3 whitening’s, so you just put 1/3 of the syringe in the front of the trays, splitting it between the top and bottom. Pop those suckers in for 45 minutes to 3 hours, starting off on the lower end while your teeth are getting used to the process. I just set my phone timer for 45 minutes and when the time was up I would brush my teeth (make sure to use non-whitening tooth paste). Rinse the trays out with cold water and then follow up with the desensitizing gel for about 25 minutes and BAM. Easy peasy.

I followed the suggestions that were made and decided to whiten my teeth at night after I ate dinner. They recommend that you do this so that the desensitizing gel can stay on as long as possible to continue to close the pores on your teeth. This also helps to avoid any possible staining by not introducing food and drinks to your freshly whitened teeth.

We usually eat dinner around 6pm and I try to avoid eating anything until I wake up the next morning. Key word try, lol. But I will say that adding the teeth whitening to my nightly routine helped me to avoid late night snacking which was just an added bonus! The whitening process also makes it so easy to multitask during, which was a must for me!

I included my before and after photos so that you can see what a difference has been made. I was able to see a major difference after my 6th session. I did experience a little bit of teeth sensitivity which is very normal. So, I stuck to whitening every other day to give my teeth a break in-between sessions. I know the lighting in the pictures isn’t great but I could really tell a difference pretty quickly!

If you are in need of a teeth refresh like myself, I highly recommend giving smile brilliant a shot!

*** GIVEAWAY CLOSED***As if this couldn’t get any better, I teamed up with Smile Brilliant to give one of my lucky readers the chance to win their very own custom fitted teeth whitening systems, WHAT! You will get a $159 credit to put towards the kit of your choice! All you have to do is click on the link below and enter your name and email, super easy! The giveaway is open to USA, UK, Australia and Canada residents only. Entries will begin today and will run until April 24th. The winner will be emailed directly! *** GIVEAWAY CLOSED***

If you don’t want to wait, they were kind enough to give me a discount code that will give you 15% off of any purchase. Use code stephreadblog15 at checkout to save today!

Happy Whitening friends!