While teeth whitening strips are often advertised, teeth whitening gel refills, such as Colgate teeth whitening gel can be a better solution for those who want to have a whiter smile. In addition, although they are usually more expensive to buy initially, buying a stronger bleach solution in the teeth whitening gel refills can provide a quicker whitening process, using less of the gel, and costing less money in the long run. Considering that a box of teeth whitening strips usually costs twenty dollars for at most two treatments, spending forty dollars for a set of four syringes full of teeth whitening gel refill solution at a thirty-five percent bleach concentration will do the job quicker, cover the teeth more fully, and whiten all of the teeth, rather than only those that the strip reaches.
Teeth Whitening Gel Refill Application
Teeth whitening gel refills can be applied in a couple of different ways. The most common is to put the teeth whitening gel refill into a mouth tray and then pressed up onto the teeth. These mouth trays are sometimes just a U-shaped tray that sits in the mouth over the teeth and is mainly just there to help hold the gel on the tooth without providing a custom fit. The U-trays can also be used to protect the gel when it is directly applied to the teeth, as will be explained in the next section.
Other mouth trays can be found in teeth whitening gel kits, where the consumer can custom fit the tray to their teeth, usually by warming a wax mouth piece and then biting into it, creating a mold of their teeth. This method is not always a good choice for those who have some sort of damage to their teeth requiring caps or fillings, or even denture wear since it can pull these items out of the mouth requiring dental work.
Dentists will also custom fit mouth pieces for people, but this is usually very costly. Doing a teeth whitening gel refill and custom mouth piece through a dentist’s office usually costs several hundred dollars compared to the forty dollars of a strong bleach solution refill kit costs. Since these teeth whitening gel refills are a gel solution, it is thick enough and sticky enough most times to also be applied directly to the teeth so that a mouth tray is not necessarily needed. This is usually a little messy and requires more gel than using a mouth piece. In addition, it is difficult to keep from wiping the gel solution off the teeth with the lips and cheeks during the thirty minutes that it needs to sit. The U-trays can be one inexpensive solution to this, just setting the tray over the applied gel so that it does not get wiped off.
