For people looking to improve almost any dental imperfection, the application of tooth veneers can be a solution for perfect teeth. Made from porcelain-like materials, they are applied to the front of teeth, on top of the enamel, and can address a number of common flaws.
For discoloration, they are applied to all of the most discolored teeth in the traditional method: the enamel is filed down in a thickness equal to thickness of the veneer – a fraction of a millimeter. They are then bonded to the tooth with a temporary adhesive to be checked for shape and color. The dentist can shape the veneer to match other teeth, or reconstruct a new overall smile shape if several are being applied at once. In addition, the color of each one can be graded so that the whole set seems entirely natural, but brighter than the natural color. After the color and shape are satisfactory, they are affixed to the tooth with a cement adhesive that will last for 5-10 years or more.
To address gaps between teeth, a dentist can employ tooth veneers in lieu of more expensive orthodontics. The dentist simply shapes the material to a size slightly larger than the teeth at each side of the gap, filling in the gap with the larger, more symmetrical teeth. The result is a perfect set of teeth in just one visit to the dentist, rather than the temporary results achieved by months of wearing expensive orthodontic devices like braces or Invisalign®. Veneers can also be applied on crooked teeth to achieve an appearance of straightness, simply by the way the dentist chooses to creatively cut and place the material on the teeth.
For such an old dental technology, the veneer affords the dentist with a strong aesthetic sensibility the opportunity to improve smiles and drastically change lives in the course of just one or two office visits. One would be hard-pressed to find a technique and technology that is so versatile in the course of day-to-day clinical cosmetic dentistry. Of course, more skilled dentists have found even more uses for them and have employed the same principles to achieve even more amazing results, reconstructing entire smiles out of them where other dentists would have simply called for dentures. These are the true artists – many of them graduates of LVI who are now instructors.
