Oral-B 3D White Luxe Perfection Toothpaste Review

Before & after results

Everyone’s teeth are different.

Our lifestyles, genetics and medical conditions all have an influence on our teeth.

Some people have heavily stained teeth, whilst others do not.

Oral-B 3D white luxe perfection works by removing surface stains and may make your teeth appear whiter, but it will not change the natural colour of your teeth.

The results you achieve by using 3d white luxe perfection will be different to me.

I have tried many different products and have little to no staining on my teeth.

Because of these circumstances, it would therefore be inaccurate to show before and after images to suggest what results you might get, because simply put, your before and after results may be very different.

Cost

The cost will vary depending on where and when you buy this toothpaste.  

My research has shown that typically some of the big name high street stores are more expensive than those who are selling online.

The recommended price for this toothpaste is £4.49.

Although the price remains relatively stable, from time to time outlets like Superdrug and Boots run promotions and the cheapest I have seen it for is £2.33 whilst other outlets even charge more than the £4.49. 

You should assume that you will be paying the full £4.49 unless you find it cheaper.

Where To Buy

You can buy a tube of this Perfection toothpaste from many high street stores, typically stocked in chemists such as Boots and Superdrug both on the high street or a quick web search will reveal lots of online stockists.

You can buy it on Amazon too.

Taste, Packaging etc

There is no denying that the packaging of this toothpaste has been designed to try and grab your attention.  It looks classy and catches the eye with the crystal white and purple colours.

The tube itself is fairly conventional with a screw cap on which the tub stands when not in use.

I find screw caps a bit of a frustration really, I think a flip lid is much better.  

Why?  

Well generally speaking you have the toothbrush in one hand and the tube of paste in the other.  A flip lid allows for one handed opening and closing.  Whilst possible with a screw cap it is a little more awkward and I just generally think would be easier. Nu Skins’s AP24 Whitening toothpaste has a flip lid.  Maybe there is a reason I am missing as to why it does not.

There is 75g of toothpaste in the tube.  

Using a pea sized amount of paste, you will get 3 months worth of use out of each tube.  Although, many dentists would suggest you don’t use whitening pastes like this for more than a couple of weeks.

When you remove the cap for the first time there is a foil seal over the top to retain the freshness and preserve the paste before you come to use it.

Unlike some healthcare products the packaging does not state that this must be used within 12 months of opening. 

I guess the assumption is that in most instances you are going to use it within a few months of opening, particularly if used every day. 

There is a best before date on the tube, which I advise you make a note of.  You usually have a couple of years from the date of purchase before it will be out of date.

To the paste itself then.

Intentional or not, I think so, this paste looks a bit showbiz and fancy.  It is not a boring plain white colour, nor is it the three stripe Aquafresh style.  No, this is an almost clear paste with an almost sparkly looking flaking throughout.

This flaking is the other ingredients of the paste that work together to help give you cleaner and whiter teeth.  Essentially, in my opinion, the paste looks interesting and lives up to the Luxe name.

The ingredients in the paste are Glycerin, Hydrated Silica, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Aqua, PEG-6, Aroma, Silica, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Trisodium Phosphate, Mica, Chondrus Crispus Powder, Sodium Saccharin, PEG-20M, Sodium Fluoride, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Chloride, CI 77891, Sucralose, Limonene, Sodium Benzoate, CI 74160.

A little more explanation on these is provided in the ‘ingredients’ section of the review.

What struck most about this whitening toothpaste is the zingy minty freshness that was left in my mouth after use and the slightly grainy and gritty texture.

When brushing, at times the paste and the resulting foam that is created can feel and taste a little gritty on the tongue and teeth even if minty in flavour.  

It was not so gritty that it tasted bad, but a little unusual and is a sign of the makeup of this paste with active ingredients that scrub the tooth surfaces to get them clean.

Once you spit out the paste this taste goes away and you are left with a minty fresh feeling.  Not overpowering at all but a level of freshness that somehow lats for a noticeable amount of time.  

With most pastes I have used, after an hour or so, whilst your mouth still feels fresh but there is often a noticeable dulling of that freshness.  Not here, I certainly felt up to a couple of hours later (subject to what I had eaten or drunk).

For the sake of clarity, this toothpaste can potentially whiten your teeth, but it is not whitening through the process of bleaching your teeth with any chemical agents, but instead cleaning them better to remove surface stains.

It is a bit of a silly analogy but imagine a white car.  This white car drives through muddy puddles.  The white paint on the car is now a black brown colour where the mud dries onto the car.

This white car is your teeth, and the mud is the tea, coffee, red wine, food and smoking that you expose your teeth too.

Now you could argue you could have the car repainted but that is expensive and involves having a professional do the job, it would look good and be whiter though!

This re-painting is getting your teeth cosmetically whitened using bleaches/peroxides available at the dentist surgery.

Or what you could do is just give the car a really good clean with some water, a soap and a wash mit, followed by a wax, to bring it back to a lovely white colour.  Maybe that white colour would not be as shiny as new paint, but still nice and white.   

This is the equivalent to using the Oral-B 3D White Luxe Perfection toothpaste (view on Amazon).

The toothpaste is not actually whitening your teeth through applying colour but instead doing a better job of removing the stains, marks and discolouration.

But, everyone’s teeth are different with variable amounts of staining (or mud if we stick with the car analogy).  Therefore when used the amount of stains removed will differ for one person to another.

Hopefully, that makes sense!

Oral-B claim that within just 3 days this paste is proven to reduce surface stains by up to 100%.  I am unable to confirm or deny this fact under the conditions of my trial.

For some people, this may well be possible.

You would likely have to have heavy staining and a poor oral hygiene routine prior to using this paste, I think to achieve such rapid results.

If you really want ‘whiter’ teeth there is only one real option and that is to have them professionally whitened. No toothpaste is going to take a set of yellow teeth to be pearly white gnashers.

Toothpaste can be measured on a scale for how abrasive it is.

The more abrasive the paste, the better it is likely to be at removing stains, but potentially the more damaging it is to the teeth.

This abrasivity is measured on the Relative Dentin Abrasivity (RDA) scale.

I don’t know where this paste ranks, but I am inclined from the texture to think it is going to come it at around or over the 100 mark which could put it in the ‘highly abrasive’ section.

The scale runs from 0-250.

• 0-70 – Low abrasive
• 71-100 – Medium abrasive
• 101-150 – Highly abrasive
• 151-250 – Regarded as harmful limit

Therefore the abrasive nature may help deliver quick stain removal (whitening) results but it is not a paste you will likely want to use for more than a couple of weeks at a time (if you follow a dentists advice) as it is a bit more abrasive.

Many, non-whitening pastes, what you and me might think as regular toothpaste will come in at 0-70 on the scale.

This higher abrasivity is quite common amongst whitening pastes yet despite this, a recent study and test by the team on the TV programme Supershoppers found that there is little difference between the amount of stains removed by a whitening toothpaste compared to a regular toothpaste. We cover this more in our post on the best whitening toothpaste.

At £4.49 this is not the cheapest toothpaste, but it is far from the most expensive.

I would suggest the average price of a tube of toothpaste is around £2, so 3D white luxe perfection is about 2 times more expensive than most other toothpastes.

However, when you look specifically at ‘whitening’ pastes these prices typically vary from about £3 to about £12, so I would have to put 3D luxe at the cheaper, value end of the scale.

Ingredients

The ingredients are:

Glycerin, Hydrated Silica, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Aqua, PEG-6, Aroma, Silica, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Trisodium Phosphate, Mica, Chondrus Crispus Powder, Sodium Saccharin, PEG-20M, Sodium Fluoride, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Chloride, CI 77891, Sucralose, Limonene, Sodium Benzoate, CI 74160.

This is by no means a scientific analysis or commentary on the ingredients, but it does include Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS) (more information) and CI 77891, otherwise known as Titanium Dioxide (more information)  which are potentially contentious inclusions for some.

Whilst commonly used within cosmetics and toothpastes for many years, in more recent times studies have identified potential health and environmental concerns. There are arguments for and against either ingredient and a range of toothpastes that are specifically designed specifically without the inclusion of such.

Safety

I have no immediate concerns over the safety of this toothpaste.  Oral-B, on the whole, conforms to high standards as far as I am aware and wouldn’t market something proven to pose a real risk to you and your health.

Where some whitening products like charcoal toothpaste often exclude fluoride, this contains it, meeting with the approval of most dental professionals.

Some of the ingredients are contentious because there are arguments to suggest they are far from ideal, but ultimately the evidence is lacking to say they really should not be present.

I have identified those of particular concern within the ingredients list above.  If you feel they pose a safety concern, avoid this paste.

I did also mention in the review about the abrasivity.  Whilst I do not know precisely how abrasive this paste is, it is a possible cause for concern.  However, knowing what you now know, it is best to stick to using this paste, if at all for just a couple of weeks.  In such time you should do little damage to the teeth.

Is it eco-friendly?

This paste has not been designed or marketed as eco-friendly.

The tube in which is comes provided is hard to recycle and will more than likely end up in landfill.

What does commonly happen with some dental health products is users buy a toothpaste hoping for certain results, that are not achieved.  As a result, they move onto new products before the old tube of paste is finished.

It might not be just because of claimed results that are not achievable, it may well be to do with taste.

By reading this review, you are one step ahead in your avoiding potentially wasting a product like this.

Other whitening products from Oral-B

As one of the market leading brands, Oral-B manufacturer many different toothpastes.

At the time of writing I count approximately 18 different products (including mouthwash) that have white or whitening in the product name.

Many fall under a sub brand called 3D White.

Whilst I have not used all of these products, they are all free from peroxides or bleaches that change the natural colour of the teeth.

Each product can work towards effectively removing staining and discolouration of the teeth, to make them appear whiter, but they will not change the original colour of the tooth.

Teeth age and get yellower, trauma and medications can also alter the colour of the teeth.  But, in these instances this affects the internal structure of the tooth, which the toothpastes and mouthwashes cannot alter.

What we would like to see improved

The main thing I would like to see improved is the education of toothpaste users like you and me.

Whilst the fault does not lie purely with Oral-B, they and other brands don’t exactly do all that much to help reduce the confusion around tooth whitening.

A whitening toothpaste does not technically whiten the teeth, as I have highlighted.

Sadly too few know this and although stain removal is often mentioned, it is not always possible for you or me to know if we have staining on our teeth.

Manufacturers could do more to explain the differences and highlight that existing whitening toothpaste users are unlikely to gain any benefit.

Ratings / Conclusion

As we’ve mentioned in the results section, it’s difficult for us (or anybody else) to systematically test numerous whitening products.

For this reason, we have chosen to omit star ratings.

However, below you can find a summary of our closing thoughts.

This is potentially one of the better ‘whitening’ pastes to try if you are keen on ensuring your teeth are stain free.

Manufactured by a leading brand, there are certain quality standards to the paste.

It has a nice taste and a long lasting freshness.

Although whitening pastes might not be all that they make out, this is one of the most cost effective options and won’t leave you out of pocket should you not get the stain removal you hoped for.

FAQ

• Where can I buy Oral-B 3D White Luxe Perfection Toothpaste?
  • You may not find it in every store, but most large high street supermarket outlets should stock it along with chemists like Boots and Superdrug.
• Does it contain peroxides?
  • No.
• What does it taste like?
  • It has a mild mint flavour with a refreshing zingy minty aftertaste that lasts a good couple of hours.
• Does it hurt?
  • I did not find it to do so. If you should gain additional sensitivity or side effects as a result of using it, stop doing so and consult a dentist.
• How long does it last?
  • Approximately 3 months based on 2 pea sized amounts being used each day.

Your Opinions

Do you own or have you used the Oral-B 3D white luxe perfection toothpaste?

Are there certain things that you really like or dislike?

Let me and other readers of this article know what you think, by commenting below.  Your feedback and opinions are incredibly valuable.