Boots Expert dissolvable teeth whitening strips
Buy now £18, Boots.com
- Steps: Apply once daily for 15 minutes
- Duration: 14 days
- Rating: 7/10
If you’re looking for cost-effectiveness, these are the strips for you. For £12 you get 56 strips (28 days worth of treatment when applied to both rows of teeth) which is double the recommended 14-day course of treatment for full whitening benefits.
According to the box, 14 days is enough time to whiten teeth up to five shades. Each evening we followed the instructions to a tee, applying strips to freshly-brushed teeth. This felt strange at first, as all whitening strips do, but we got used to it. Harder to adjust to was our lips repeatedly sticking to the strips for the first few minutes after every application.
What made this more bearable was the time it took to dissolve. Even though the box says this will happen in somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, we found it had pretty much all gone by minute eight or nine. It leaves behind a tacky residue, which doesn’t taste bad but also doesn’t feel pleasant. While this is easy enough to brush or rinse away, we wish it dissolved completely to a point that this wasn’t necessary.
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This is a minor issue though. The purpose of whitening strips is to whiten, and we spent the first three days anticipating a shift in shade as promised by the box. Sadly this didn’t happen in the span of 72 hours, which did seem too good to be true, but by day six there was a slight improvement on our most significantly stained teeth.
Most of the improvement took place by day eleven. Our teeth weren’t five shades lighter by any means, but discolouration had noticeably lifted. After this point we didn’t see any more changes, and we doubt any would have taken place by finishing the whole box. The biggest difference was definitely on the most heavily stained teeth and results were nowhere near as noticeable on teeth free of staining.
Even if there wasn’t a dramatic change, it helped our teeth begin to return to a uniform natural shade, which was enough to give us a budget-friendly confidence boost. After all, there’s only so much an at-home whitening kit can do without dentist levels of hydrogen peroxide (or any at all – this kit is totally hydrogen peroxide free).
The upside of not using hydrogen peroxide is that there was no extra sensitivity. This is the ingredient that lies behind teeth whitening’s reputation for worsening how your teeth react to extreme temperatures, as it can contribute to enamel erosion with prolonged exposure, so in this way we were glad of its absence.
The verdict: Boots Expert dissolvable teeth whitening stripsWe would never say no to an easy confidence boost, and that’s exactly what these strips provide. Sure, they won’t give you a Hollywood smile overnight. But with 14 days of minimal effort, you can minimise staining and help ease your teeth back towards their natural colour – even if they can’t get them all the way.
Results weren’t as noticeable on teeth with minimal staining, so anyone with already very light teeth probably won’t see the benefit. However, for the right candidate, these strips are a solid option. They’re gentle, easy to use, and, at £18, much more accessible than professional whitening.