I Spent Over $400 Testing the Best Mouth Tape Brands, Here’s What I Learned.

I’ve gone through the hard work of taping my mouth shut with all kinds of tape so you don’t have to!

Here’s proof! ⤵

Think of this as the definitive guide to mouth tape. I tried everything here with and without my beard btw.

Adhesive Types

I think it’s worth touching on adhesives really quick, because there’s only two:

1. Acrylic
2. Silicone

Acrylic adhesives almost always have a stronger hold and many of the tapes I tried held a bit too firmly and hurt to remove, these were always acrylic based. If you’re worried about losing mouth tape overnight and wasting money applying more than one per day, a stronger hold may be exactly what you’re looking for.

However Acrylic tends to use slightly more irritating chemicals and if you’re looking for a safer, gentler tape, silicone tape is the way to go.

I prefer silicone personally, I like the feel and find the removal to be more pleasant, but any kind of facial hair or moisture can limit its adhesive properties.

What Kinds of Mouth Tape Are There?

There’s a lot out there, different shapes, comfort levels, adhesives, storage, etc. It’s a lot to take in and even harder to actually pull the trigger on one specific brand.

My goal is to give you a birds eye view of the mouth tape landscape so that you can make an informed choice.

There are five main categories:

1. Over mouth
2. Just lips
3. Just the tip
4. DIY
5. Around mouth

The Mouth Tapes I’ve Tried

So let’s discuss the tapes I tried, the good and the bad.

Over the Mouth

The most popular category is over the mouth, there are a LOT of these out there. I just bought some of the most popular ones to see if there were any real differences.

Papmd was the largest by far and is actually the exact same dimensions you’d get from the DIY kinesiology tape (we’ll go over it later). I did find that this one had a slight smell to it though. Stuck just fine to beard hair and wasn’t a pain to take off.

The normal tape Dream sells had a much stronger hold and I personally felt it was too much, but if you’re looking for that, this has it!

The collagen/vitamin infused Dream+ is interesting and worked great but it doesn’t stick well to facial hair, it was much closer to the stickiness level of papmd than the normal dream tape.

I really can’t say for sure if it’s vitamin infusion works, but if you’re the type that likes to go all out on something this is by far the coolest mouth tape!

The hostage tape and ZZZ were probably the best overall, as they adhered well but not too tightly, and worked great with beards. I will say, though, that the hostage tape smelled better. The ZZZ tape had a slight smell to it (much less than PAPMD) while the hostage tape had no smell whatsoever.

These all use an acrylic adhesive so nothing stands out there.

Just the Lips

If you find the over the lips style a bit too much these might be worth exploring!

These all include a small slit in the lips which you might like if you’re nervous about mouth taping. It allows you to breathe through your mouth if you want, but you won’t do so on accident so it doesn’t really take way from the main idea here.

Somnifix and Dryft are some of the only commercial mouth tape brands that use a silicone adhesive, while Skinny Confidential is acrylic.

Somnifix comes in these “bandaid” wrappers that I found kind of annoying…

I reached out to all of these companies prior to this review asking about which adhesives they use and I was really impressed with Dryfts response in particular! These were very open about their production process and the reason they chose to use silicone (safer) so I feel good about recommending them.

Just the Tip

There’s a couple of tapes I found that don’t quite fit in with the other categories.

VIO2 has this odd shape which can be worn in either direction. I found these smelled a little and I also thought the adhesive was a little too strong, kinda hurts taking it off. Also due to the odd shape it’s kinda floppy when removing and applying it and it can be a little too easy to accidentally stick it to itself, which basically ruins the tape.

Dream strips are super minimal and a dream come true for anyone who wants to mouth tape and hates the feeling of tape all over their face. The adhesive is a bit strong (seems to be a theme with Dream), but they definitely work!

DIY

If you want to go the DIY route to save some money there’s a few options! Here are the ones I tried out:

3M micropore is pretty popular but it’s awful. The acrylic adhesive sticks to your skin after peeling it off and it’s just nasty. Pass on this.

3M silicone medical tape on the other hand is pretty good! Very similar to the feel of other silicone adhesives like Dryft and Somnifix, the only real con here is that when you go to rip a piece off the oil from your skin can somewhat degrade the adhesive. I’ve found that just clean hands and being mindful of this goes a long way.

MedVance is an interesting one, it’s silicone but feels quite a bit different than the 3M and comes in perforated sections making the ripping of sections much easier. I prefer the 3M version but this might be worth trying.

Last is Kinesiology tape which is actually what most of the big mouth tape brands are. This is a two way stretch acrylic-based tape that really is almost identical to all the other “over the mouth” brands. You just have to cut out the size you want and you’re good!

PAPMD is actually the same size as most of these so if you like that larger size this will work great to mimic that feeling. You can of course cut out any size you like.

Around the Mouth

This is an interesting one that many people don’t realize is an option!

MyoTape makes a mouth tape designed to go around your mouth instead of over your lips. This might be a good choice if your especially nervous about not being able to breath through your mouth at night, or if you drink water throughout the night.

And yes it works! Your mouth will not open accidentally with this tape. But with some effort you can part your lips, unlike with other tape.

MyoTape actually sells two different versions, a normal one and one for beards.

One issue I had with this brand is that its packaging smells awful. I’m not sure why or what it is, but the inside of the package has this sweet chemical aroma that I did not enjoy. The tape itself wasn’t that smelly, but all of them in the bag certainly were!

Another problem I had, is the tape all comes on a single sheet with no perforations. So you have to hand cut them out to get singles.

And then when you go to rip them off, the paper backing often peels up with the tape instead of the tape coming off the paper like it should.

Overall the MyoTape are an unique take on mouth tape that some people may find appealing.

Pricing

So I took all the pricing info for all the tape I tested here so you can compare them. Overall the DIY route is much cheaper anywhere from $0.03 to $0.16 per tape. While some tapes like the Dream+ get way up to $1.65 per tape. So you can certainly save money going the DIY route, though you lose out on some of the ease of use.

Some others like Myotape and pomade are also rather cheap relatively speaking. But here’s the table to explore:

Mouth Taping Benefits

Mouth taping prevents the mouth from opening wide at night while you sleep, this simple act can lead to a whole host of benefits.

1. Improved Breathing

Taping the mouth shut can encourage breathing through the nose, which is the body’s natural way of breathing during sleep. This can lead to better oxygenation, which may improve sleep quality and overall health.

2. Reduced Risk of Sleep Apnea

As your mouth opens your jaw falls back into your throat. As this happens it becomes much easier for the esophagus to become obstructed, limiting airflow.

In some people, the throat can become completely obstructed leading to what is called obstructive sleep apnea.

Mouth tape can of course help keep the mouth closed and help diminish this effect on esophageal narrowing.

3. Reduced Snoring

Snoring is often caused by the vibration of tissues in the throat and nasal passages when air passes through them.

When you breathe through your nose, it’s more efficient and relaxed and tends to decrease the possibility of vibration and snoring.

4. Better Oral Health

The saliva in your mouth contains all kinds of enzymes and proteins that keep your it clean and keep the bacteria under control.

If your mouth is open all night even if you’re not breathing through it, all of that saliva will dry up, which can lead to an uncomfortable dry mouth but more importantly it can cause tooth decay, gum disease, and BAD BREATH. *gasp*

Does Mouth Tape Actually Help You Sleep Better?

While we have anecdotes of people’s sleep improving after they start taping their mouths, does science bear this out?

Is there even any science?

Let’s check.

What the Science Says About Mouth Taping

I could only find a few studies that implemented mouth taping, and they all involved sleep apnea outcomes.

In the first study, which took place in 2014, 30 participants were instructed to sleep with a porous oral patch or POP.

The POP resulted in a significant decrease in both snoring events and apnea events.

There were other noted changes as well, for example before treatment with the POP, 83% (25/30) of patients had a dry mouth when awaking, and 53% (16/30) of patients drooled during sleep.

However, after using the POP drooling and dry mouth completely disappeared!

The only other study I could find on mouth taping was recently published in 2022.

This study involved 20 participants who suffered from mouth dryness, mouth breathing, and sleep apnea events.

Interestingly the mouth tape used in this study was a small piece of 3M silicone micropore tape, the same kind we recommend!

Once again we see that closing the mouth theoretically opens the esophagus wider, preventing breathing issues.

The mouth-taping intervention above was shown to significantly improve the apnea/hypopnea index (AHI), apnea index (AI), and hypopnea index (HI) in most participants.

Researchers noted that most of these improvements were seen during supine sleeping when gravity is most likely to negatively impact those susceptible to OSA.

Snoring issues were also largely resolved in many of the participants:

And there we have it!

While these studies are small, the concept is pretty straightforward and logical.

If you can breathe through your nose well, mouth taping will almost certainly result in better breathing, sleep quality, and oral health throughout the night.

Tips for Using Mouth Tape

1. Wear it during the day: If you’ve never taped your mouth at night, wear some during the day so that you can get used to the sensation before you try to fall asleep like this.
2. Dry your lips: If you have any moisture under the tape it will likely come off during the night, so make sure your lips are dry first!
3. Puff out your lips a little bit: This can give you a bit more surface area to work with. It really all depends on how much skin you have both above and below your lips.
4. Make sure everything is dry! Since you don’t have quite as much room to work with, again, ensure that your lips are dry by dabbing them with your shirt or your teddy bear or something.
5. Go easy on the beard oil: If you oil up your beard around your lips too much the tape won’t stick as well, so keep that in mind!