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Getting your teeth whitened may well be somewhere on the wedding to-do list — but when should you actually start? Daniel Smith, founder and CEO of Pure Glow Teeth Whitening, learned the hard way that leaving it until the last minute can be a mistake. Here, he shares what he wishes he had known, and why starting earlier could make all the difference.
I should say straight away that I am not married yet, so I got this wrong on my own time rather than on my wedding day. But the mistake I made is exactly the one I watch people make before theirs.
A few years ago I was heading off on holiday and bought a box of whitening strips the week before. I got through three of them. Not because they worked, but because they would not stay on my teeth. About £5 wasted, which was not really the point. The point was that I had paid for something that didn't do the basic job it was sold to do, and I had left it far too late to do anything about it.
The second part though, is what catches people out before a wedding. Whitening gets remembered about a fortnight before the day, which is precisely when it's too late to do it properly.
Start four weeks out, not one
A 14-day course begun four weeks before leaves you a fortnight's margin for error, and you'll want it. Something always eats up a few days, and if you're feeling up against it, you'll rush, which never improves anything.
Before you begin the whitening process, around six to eight weeks before the big day, see a hygienist. Whitening works on the surface of the tooth, so there's little sense trying to whiten through plaque. Get any dental work finished at the same time.
There are two small things that make a real difference. Take a photo on day one, in daylight, against the same background you'll use at the end, because the change is gradual and you won't spot it happening day-to-day. And go easy on coffee, tea and red wine while the course is running. Then in the week of the wedding itself, try nothing new.
The number one cause of throwing the towel in
Sensitivity. It's the most common reason a course gets abandoned half finished, and the reason I ended up building a whitening brand rather than simply buying a better one.
Most whitening uses hydrogen peroxide. It works, but it gave me sensitivity bad enough that I stopped altogether. So I moved to peroxide-free products and hit the other problem, the one from that holiday. They slid about, whitened patchily and left gel residue behind.
PAP, or phthalimidoperoxycaproic acid, is the peroxide-free alternative that solved it for me. It lifts staining by oxidising it, using the the same principle as peroxide without the sensitivity. Meanwhile, hydroxyapatite, the mineral enamel is largely made of, helps replenish the surface enamel while you whiten. Steer clear of anything abrasive, including charcoal. Scrubbing is not whitening, and enamel doesn't grow back.
Why I'm confident telling you this
I spent 15 years at Jaguar Land Rover, a good stretch of it as a Health and Safety representative. It's a job that trains you to ask whether something genuinely does what it claims to before it goes anywhere near a person, and I brought the habit with me.
When I got home from that holiday I spent several hundred pounds buying and testing every whitening product I could get hold of, and wrote down every fault I found. Then I took the list to manufacturers. Several refused to move away from their standard formula, because peroxide is cheaper and easier to make. One, however, agreed and it took around 10 months with lots of rejected versions before I was willing to put my name on it. That became Pure Glow.
One honest thing
Whitening works on staining, not on the natural colour you were born with. Some discolouration comes from inside the tooth rather than the surface, and that's a conversation with your dentist rather than a box off a shelf.
If you have crowns or veneers, whitening will not change the colour of the crown itself, but it will lift the staining that has built up on it over the years, so it is still worth doing. Ask your dentist about matching before you start rather than after.
Where to start
Here's your checklist: Begin four weeks out, go peroxide-free, and take the photo on day one.
Whatever you end up using, begin earlier than you think you need to. That single change will do more for the result than anything else on this page.
Daniel Smith is the founder of Pure Glow Teeth Whitening, based in Coventry. Pure Glow PAP+ strips are £17.97 for a 14-day treatment, with no sensitivity and up to six shades over the course. Available at pureglowteethwhitening.com and on Amazon UK.
