Preconditioning mouth rinse, which pre-treats the teeth to better receive awhitening formula containing a photosensitive compound, and a hand-heldconsumer light source (10) for tooth whitening, which provides rapid toothwhitening, are disclosed. The light source may use a specific range of visiblelight and also emit heat sufficient to raise the temperature of the teeth adesired amount at a depth up to about 2 mm in the range of about from 1 - 5~Celsius over a predetermined period of time.
