The power of denture cleaner and other surprising laundry hacks

Fair Go compares some wacky (and also some quite normal) ways to deal to red wine and lipstick stains. By Indira Stewart.

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Type in #laundryhacks on most social media platforms and you’ll be flooded with tips, tricks and cheats for getting your sheets, towels and clothes pristine.

But be prepared for the wild and wacky laundry hacks you didn’t know you needed. Who knew shaving foam and denture tablets would be two of the most recommended products for making stains disappear? At least according to dozens of TikTokers and laundry bloggers online.

Fair Go decided to put a few of those random laundry hacks floating around to the test, comparing them with popular regular stain removers – Vanish Power Gel and SARD Wonder Soap – products our TVNZ styling team swear by.

We conducted our own unscientific experiment at one of Auckland University of Technology’s science labs, with the help of a real scientist though, Dr Jack Chen.

Dr Chen, a senior lecturer in chemistry, is an expert in surfactants – or surface active agents – basically detergents that help trap dirt and remove it from the surface. Which means he’s the perfect man for your dirty laundry.

After staining a brand new white T-shirt with four blotches of red wine and four equal dabs of waterproof red lipstick, we applied four different products to the stains to see which best removed them.

The products were Vanish Power Gel, SARD Wonder Soap, Steradent Denture Tablets and Nivea Men’s Shaving Foam.

While denture tablets might seem a surprising choice to some, a quick comparison of its ingredients list with those of other regular laundry products shows they contain many of the same ingredients. Steradent denture tablets also contain CI 28440 and CI 42090 which, as Dr Chen points out, are dyes that turn water blue.

Some denture tablet products also contain sorbitol which is essentially a sweetener that might help with the after-taste of cleaning. (A warning though, denture tablets come with clear warnings that consuming the tablets or their solution is hazardous.)

The two key ingredients to look for in laundry products are surfactants and oxidisers. Surfactants help lift the stains off the fabric. Oxidisers, such as hydrogen peroxide, react with the colour dyes to break them down.

Dr Chen assessed the contestants. If you think about the Vanish Power Gel, it contains mostly hydrogen peroxide, whereas SARD soap contains mainly surfactants or a detergent. The shaving foam is also mostly a surfactant-based product and interestingly the Steradent Denture Tablets contains both an oxidizer as well as surfactants.

“So I'm actually going to go with Steradent Denture Tablets because it’s got both and I think it might be the one that performs the best.”

While SARD Wonder Soap would later come into its own on the waterproof lipstick stain, when it came to the red wine stain, SARD soap turned it blue.

“Sard contains a couple of surfactants – one’s made essentially from lard and the other one from coconut oil and to get the surfactants to work we essentially need to rub it into the stain," says Dr Chen.

“SARD should be just binding to the oily substances of the stain and pulling it off into the water.”

Vanish Power Gel had similar effects to SARD Wonder Soap, in its case turning the red wine stain purple.

We placed two Steradent denture tablets in water and soaked the stained sleeves of our T-shirt in the solution. For a full regular load of whites, one internet laundry expert claims it takes 126 tablets to do the trick. But less is more, cautions Dr Chen.

“With a lot of these agents you need time for it to work, so it needs time to soak and have its chemical reaction,” he says.

“The oxidising agent is what reacts with the colour components of the dye and actually breaks it down. So it removes the colour essentially by breaking down the pigments.”

Within minutes the red wine stain was turning a patchy blue and white – leaving behind some blue specks. The spot of fabric on which the tablet had been sitting directly had gone white. “Yeah that’s definitely the oxygen doing its work – where it’s concentrated that’s actually doing something,” said Dr Chen. “I think with a bit more time – the oxidising agents in Steradent would've broken down the dyes essentially,” he says.

According to Dr Chen, those blue specks are dyes or colourants that can easily be avoided by fully dissolving the denture tablets before applying the solution to the stain – something we didn't do.

Despite being the clear winner with the red wine, the denture tablets weren’t as effective on the waterproof red lipstick stain. "It depends on the stain – it’s not a one-size-fits-all," says Dr Chen. "And it also depends on the dyes. For example, in wine you've got these anthocyanins – they're the molecules that give wine it's antioxidant properties and its red colour.

“Whereas lipstick is a hardier dye. But the natural dyes in wine are biological compounds so can break down more easily.”

For the waterproof red lipstick stain, Vanish Power Gel and SARD Wonder Soap came out on top.

The immediate results of our experiment showed the Nivea Men’s Shaving Foam was the least effective product in removing both stains. It changed the colour of the red wine stain to blue and didn’t do much to the lipstick stain. To be clear though, it isn’t meant to be used as a laundry cleaner.

Safe to say, any laundry cleaner that has the right combination of surfactants and oxidants will go a long way to disappearing almost any stain. But if you spill your Cab Sav on that sharp white shirt? Chuck some denture tablets on there and she’ll be right.

Watch this show on our new home for news, in-depth and consumer stories, TVNZ+.