Best teeth-whitening strips and toothpaste for 2021 – CNET [CNET]

I’m so obsessed with my teeth that I actually look forward to my biannual dentist appointment. I’ve even considered booking appointments on a quarterly schedule so I could have a professional cleaning more often.

But fighting tooth decay is only part of ensuring that I have a healthy smile. I’m also fixated on ensuring that my pearly whites stay that way. As such, it’s always been important to me to have an effective teeth-whitening product on hand because I drink coffee daily and red wine once or twice a week. These are habits that don’t lend themselves to white teeth — in fact, they can lead to extrinsic stains that require bleaching or some other whitening effort. Thus, my ongoing search for a whitening system that gives me a whiter smile.

While there’s no shortage of tooth-whitening products on the market, I have sensitive gums (more on that in my roundup of the best electric toothbrushes for 2021), so for me, a good tooth-whitening product is one that’s effective but doesn’t sear my gum tissue. Also, as far as I’m concerned, a good whitening product makes my teeth look natural — none of that so-white-it-hurts nonsense.

I know not everyone has tooth sensitivity or crybaby gums like me, so while in a perfect world I would only test gentle products to avoid gum irritation, I white-knuckled through some intense hydrogen peroxide bleaching concentrations to find the best teeth-whitening products for 2021. In the name of reporting, right? We’ll update this periodically.

How I chose these teeth-whitening products

I began with a long list of whitening products that could potentially make it into this roundup, looking at things like brand reputation, buyer reviews on Amazon and full reviews by other writers. After narrowing the big bad list of teeth-whitening products down to about 20 options, I started testing.

Because it would be impossible to test the long-term efficacy of all of these whitening products without annihilating my enamel and gum tissue (or working on this project for literal years, because I wouldn’t be able to adequately judge how much whiter each of them made my teeth by using them back to back), I judged each product against a few criteria that I think will help you make a buying decision.

Here’s a quick rundown: 

• Whitening toothpaste: Judged on taste, texture, ingredients, residue and general mouthfeel 
• Whitening strips: Judged on fit, coverage (how many teeth it covers), ease of use, sensations (such as burning gums) and length of wear 
• LED whitening lights: Judged the same way as whitening strips 
• Whitening pens: Judged mainly on ease of use and how well the gel stays put on teeth, but also sensations if some of the gel got on my gums

Now, for the best teeth-whitening product picks for 2021.

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