The cosmetic industry has of late been busy with making us all look like a certain talent show judge, his teeth are so white that they are more famous than he is. The trend for whiter teeth is now huge, and so cosmetic dentists are often as busy making our teeth whiter as they are cleaning and repairing them. You don’t need a dentist to do this though if you want to go down the DIY route, and a kit from the chemist is less than a £100. You have to avoid certain foods that will undo all the hard work, but its worth it if you are conscious of the colour of your molars. It involves a gum shield filled with a bleaching agent. Another popular method is the salon version; this involves a trained technician who coats your teeth with a bleaching agent. Lets look at the DIY method first. This comes in a pack and is available on the net and at all good chemists. It has a rubber mouth guard that you sometimes have to put into a bowl of hot water first, this softens it enough so you can bite on it and make a mould of your teeth impressions. Do this for the top and bottom sets. Then you mix up a bleaching agent and pour that into the mould, leaving some room for it to overflow as you bite on it. You close the top and bottom mould together and simply wait for a period of time. Then you take it off and hopefully you’ll have nice white teeth, you may have to repeat this a few times. There are restrictions on what you can do for the next day or so, but all in all it will whiten your teeth to some degree. The most popular method is the light method; this is done in a salon by a trained technician. They usually travel from salon to salon and can also do this at your home and place of work. They look at your gums first to make sure they aren’t too receded, then if alls fine they will coat your lips and gums with a protective gel. A rubber device is placed in your mouth to give maximum exposure to the enamel on your teeth, then a liquid is brushed on the teeth and an intense light is shone on your teeth. As with the home kits the light reacts with the liquid to whiten the teeth.