Crest Whitestrips 1 Hour Express: Before & After

Last Friday, I arrived early and sat in my car waiting to meet up with someone from one of the Facebook 24/7 sites (And for those of you who don't know what those are, it's not an anytime online hookup, LOL. It's just like KSL classifieds, but on Facebook.) to buy some wooden crates to try out a home decor Pinterest project. 

What do you do when you're in your car waiting for something? There's always playing on your phone, listening to music, reading, or...closely inspecting your teeth in the mirror. Naturally, I did the latter. To my chagrin, as the sun brightly gleamed through the window, I discovered my pearly whites looked more like individual pieces of giant yellow corn attached to my gums. OK, that's obviously an exaggeration, and a pretty gross picture at that, but they really did look much less white than the last time I performed a multi-point inspection.

I have a custom whitening tray from my dentist, along with a couple of tubes of Nite White gel (only available from your dentist), but I forgot to wear it that night, and I had a party to attend on Saturday. I needed fast results. As I took a gander at the assortment of whitening products on the toothpaste aisle at my local Target, the Crest Whitestrips 1 Hour Express caught my eye. One hour doesn't seem like a lot of time for miraculous teeth whitening. But desperate times call for desperate measures...

I used Crest Whitestrips a realllllly long time ago. I remember them working fairly well, but being a bit slippery in terms of adhering to my teeth. Additionally, I needed to wear them overnight before seeing noticeable results. So I was skeptical about a 1-hour version doing anything noteworthy. Wow. They proved me wrong! First, "Advanced Seal" quite accurately portrays how they stick to your teeth. The strip for the top teeth literally didn't budge. I don't normally whiten my bottom teeth, because they are extremely sensitive, but I decided to give it a go consider the toll my Diet Coke habit has taken on them. The strip for those stayed on fairly well, but not with the Darth Vader death grip of the upper layer.

During

I applied the strips and checked the time on my phone.

Before

I swear they looked worse than this the day I performed the close inspection in my car.

Nonetheless, they were still not Ross Gellar white. 

After

After 1 hour, the result: a noticeably impressive change in whiteness. I took the before and the after pictures in the same location with the same lighting. My lips and skin appear a bit pinker because I did some skincare/exfoliating in the interim. As with all whitening products I've used, I began to feel a slight ache a few hours later, due to my extreme teeth sensitivity. I took 4 ibuprofen and that took off the edge. 

Bottom line? If you're looking for a quick whitening fix before a party or date, or you're just tired of your nasty yellow choppers, get thee to a drugstore and pick up a box of these babies, because they work.