If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reviewing various teeth whitening methods, it’s that people are willing to pay ungodly amounts of money when they find an effective teeth whitening treatment that they believe will give them the much sought after pearly whites.

While the exact whitening methods may differ slightly, there are more similarities than differences between just about every system out there. The big difference between methods that require an in-office visit to the dentist and those that you can do at home is, predictably, price.

In fact, while you can expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000 for a single whitening treatment at a dentist’s office, you can actually get nearly the same, if not exactly the same, results by doing it yourself at home.

And the best part? When you choose the option to do it yourself at home, you can actually get everything you need for free!

I’m going to tell you how to do that in just a second, but first let’s go over the most common teeth whitening methods so that you understand how these things work and what you can expect.

First let’s start with the basics. The vast majority of teeth whitening methods, whether they be those used in-office by dentists, or those used by people at home doing it themselves, use a peroxide-based gel to do the actual whitening.

Because the basics are the same, most people agree that you can get very similar results from in-home whitening methods that use a tray-based system as you can from a bleaching treatment that a dentist would perform.

The big difference, as mentioned above, is cost. And it’s not just because the initial treatment you’ll receive from your dentist is vastly more expensive. It’s also because the majority of people who choose to get a whitening treatment from their dentist won’t stop after the first one.

In fact, most dentists will tell you that the majority of their patients will actually return for two, three, or even four whitening procedures before they say they’re satisfied with the results.

So now you can see that the initial estimate of $1000 to have this done in a dentist’s office is actually probably underestimating the true cost when all is said and done. Also, some dentists use something called an activation light — you may also have heard this referred to as a laser — which will further add to the cost.

Now, just so you don’t get the wrong idea, I’m certainly not disparaging professional teeth whitening methods at all. In fact, many, many people have been very satisfied with the results they’ve seen from methods employed by their dentists.

However, because more and more of the at-home teeth whiteners that we have access to are equal to the quality that you’ll find in most dentist’s offices, it’s becoming a lot harder to rationalize the significant extra cost associated with the office visit.