I Tested the Viral Teeth-Whitening Kit From IG—and I Have *Thoughts* (2024)

I truly cannot resist a good teeth-whitening product. Despite being a beauty editor, I’m surprisingly very lazy, so most at-home devices (hi, laser hair removal and light therapy masks) are too much effort for me. But a quick whitening kit I can cue up while binging Bridgerton? Yes, pls. So when I saw Snow Teeth Whitening pop up on my Instagram and TikTok feeds for the zillionth time (seriously, every five minutes, I see another Snow Teeth Whitening review), I decided to test out yet another social media trend, all in the name of ~beauty science~. More or less.

For my review, I tested the classic Snow Teeth Whitening All-in-One kit that comes with four tubes of whitening serum and an LED light for $150 (which, according to the website, should get you 75 treatments, so about $2 a session/day). I personally live and die by my Crest 3DWhite Strips with LED Light for $70 (which come with 10 strips, so $7 per session/day). Even though the Crest strips are more expensive per session, they make my teeth look bright white after 10 days. So to compare, I decided to test the Snow Teeth kit for 10 days too.

How does Snow Teeth LED Whitening work?

The Snow Teeth Whitening kit comes with an LED mouthpiece, a protective case for the mouthpiece, a shade guide, and four twist tubes of whitening serum (three regular strength, one maximum strength). According to the very sparse directions, you just paint the serum over your freshly brushed teeth, pop in the mouthpiece, plug it into your phone (yup, really), and whiten anywhere from 9 to 30 minutes each day, for 21 to 30 days straight.

What are the main ingredients in Snow Teeth Whitening?

The two MVP ingredients in the Snow Teeth whitening serums are hydrogen peroxide and carbamide peroxide, two very common (and safe) ingredients found in most at-home whitening kits. “They’re both acids that are used as bleaching agents,” says Daniel S. Rubinshtein, cosmetic dentist at Bensonhurst Dental in Brooklyn, NY. “Hydrogen peroxide is commonly used in the office at higher doses, and at home in lower doses, which is why it takes so many days for you to see results.”

Does LED light whiten teeth?

No, on their own, LED lights don’t actually whiten your teeth. “There’s no heavy research that proves that LED equals white teeth,” says Rubinshtein. “The active ingredients in a product’s formula are what’s really whitening your teeth, but LED is believed to ‘activate’ the added additional ingredients.” FWIW, I’ve used a ton of whitening products in my life, and I’ve consistently found the most effective to be those that come with an LED component, but I guess it’s (very) possible that the whitening power was really coming from the formula itself, instead of the light.

My Snow Teeth Whitening review

First thoughts on the kit

I’ll be honest: I wish that the kit came with more detailed instructions than just a four-step, four-sentence pamphlet. Definitely good for the people who DGAF, but I was left wondering what the difference was between the two serum strengths (answer: the regular is 6 to 10 percent strength, and the maximum is 12 to 18 percent strength), when to use them, and how to decide between a nine-minute session vs. a 30-minute session.

Like, that’s just too much freedom for my brain. How many days of nine-minute sessions would I need? How much faster would it be if I just toughed it out with 30-minute sessions? And which serum strength goes best with each time option?! In the end, I decided to test 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and 30 minutes, just to see the difference in brightness at the end of each session.

My teeth before whitening

As much as I love you, I opted not to take an up-close photo of my tea-stained teeth to live on the internet forever (hey, what if I become president one day?). But I was surprised to find that my front teeth were only a 3.0 on the shade guide (out of 15), considering it had been almost a year since I last used my Crest strips. Usually, my strips would get me pretty close to a 1.5 after 10 days, so that was my goal for Snow: lighten me to at least a 1.5 in 10 days.

The whitening process

• DAY 1
  I decided to do the bare minimum first to see what we were working with. I started with the regular-strength serum and set my phone timer for 10 minutes. At the end, I spit, rinsed, and…saw nothing. Zero change. My teeth looked absolutely the same. Womp.
• DAY 2
  I’ll admit that 10 minutes is a brief time (my Crest strips require 30 minutes, FWIW), so I set my timer for the full 30 minutes this time, still using the regular-strength serum. Surprisingly, my teeth still looked the exact same by the end. Double womp.
• DAY 3
  This time, I switched to the maximum-strength serum, set a timer for 20 minutes to split the difference, and…finally saw a tiny bit of change. Barely noticeable, definitely not impressive, but proof that the kit was, in fact, working.
• DAYS 4-10
  I continued with the maximum-strength gel and kept the sessions around 20 to 25 minutes, since that was the middle-ish of the suggested timeframe. I had some tooth sensitivity around day seven, but nothing too intense that I felt like I had to stop. Some days, I noticed my teeth looked brighter at the end, but other days, it felt like it hadn’t made a difference at all.

My Snow Teeth Whitening results

After my 10^th day, my teeth were a 2.5, maaaybe a 2.25 at best. Definitely a bit brighter than my original score of 3.0, but nowhere near my goal of 1.5. Granted, Snow never promised to whiten my teeth within 10 days—their website clearly suggests 21 days for a reason—but I still expected the maximum-strength gel to be a little more effective than it was, especially since I was using it within their upper time frame.

My guess is that at the end of the 21 days, I would have gotten to a full 2.0, maybe even close to my 1.5 goal, but I am lazy, and 10 days was my tap-out time for this experiment. Snow Teeth Whitening is obviously effective, but I ~hypothesize~ that the Crest White Strips work faster because they keep the sticky gel in constant contact with my teeth. With Snow, there’s more room for user error—like how much serum is applied, how much you salivate (and “wash off” the serum), the timing, the strength of the serum, etc.

What I liked (and didn’t like) about Snow

What I liked:

• The simplicity
  Just twist the tube (which is super reminiscent of the lip-gloss pens of the ‘00s), paint it on your teeth, pop in the mouthpiece, and sit. It isn’t messy, it doesn’t taste bad—it’s just really, truly easy.
  
• The charging attachments
  I thought it was cheesy at first that the mouthpiece plugs into your phone to activate, but then I realized it was lowkey brilliant. Because guess what I did the entire time I was whitening? Scroll through TikTok.
  
• The gentle formula
  Read through the Snow Teeth Whitening reviews, and you’ll see the same thing mentioned again and again: how gentle the serum is for sensitive teeth. I have somewhat sensitive teeth and was surprised the maximum-strength formula barely affected me, so I can imagine 21 days of regular-strength would have been perfectly manageable.

What I didn’t like:

• The mouthpiece
  I really, really disliked having a bulky guard in my mouth for 20+ minutes at a time. I found that because the guard doesn’t have grooves for your teeth (other than a tiny ledge on the top), you end up biting down to keep it from sliding around, which made me jaw and teeth feel achey by the end of each session. I started dreading my daily sessions because I was just so uncomfy.
• The warmth
  After a few minutes, the LED light starts to warm up the mouthpiece, your teeth, and your saliva (yum). At first, I panicked that I was having an allergic reaction, but nope—it’s just the light. It’s not exactly uncomfortable, but it just adds to the reminder that you’ve got something in your mouth.
• The effectiveness
  Again, I didn’t test it for the suggested 21 days, but I wasn’t super impressed by what I saw after 10 days, since I was used to the efficacy of my white strips. That being said, Snow barely irritated my teeth, while my Crest strips almost always cause some sensitivity.

So is Snow Teeth Whitening effective?

Yes, Snow is definitely effective at whitening your teeth at a slow and gentle pace. If you’re someone who can’t handle most whitening products because of tooth sensitivity, I’d recommend giving Snow a chance, since it is so customizable (i.e., you can use the regular-strength serum for just nine minutes a day over the course of 30+ days). It’s slower, but it’ll work.

“At the end of the day, at-home whitening products are all fundamentally the same,” says Dr. Rubinshtein. “It’s a bleach product that goes into your enamel—the outer layer of your tooth—and removes that layer of superficial stain.” So ultimately, your results will come down to your tooth’s composition. “If your enamel is very thin, it’s not going to work as well as it would on thicker enamel,” he says. “The thinner your enamel, the more see-through it is, and the more your dentin layer underneath—which is naturally yellow—will be visible.”

And this, folks, is exactly why you should always chat with your dentist first before going overboard with whitening products. You might think your whitening kit isn’t working, when in reality, you may just have thin enamel that’s showing your dentin—something you can’t whiten and can actually become more visible if you over-use whitening products and damage your enamel.

Final Snow Teeth Whitening review

Will I be giving up my white strips and switching to Snow forever more? No. I’m lucky that my teeth can handle classic white strips, so I’ll continue with my 10-day strip life, even if they’re messy, gummy, and oozy. But would I recommend Snow Teeth Whitening? 100 percent, especially if you’re someone who has ultra-sensitive teeth and doesn’t mind going slow. Or, ideally, we can all discover a pit of money in our backyard that allows us to get our teeth professionally whitened instead. Whichever works.