Porcelain veneers can, if not paid attention to the details, can come across looking too bulky. Those typical tend to veneers are typically add-on veneers, kind of like add-on fingernails, and the thickness is too much usually, and they usually have a more white dull tone to them. So I think you have to look at how the bite is.
Again, look at size and shape of the teeth. You know, we’re always trying to prepare things minimally, and that’s the good thing with a veneer is it’s a more minimal preparation than say a crown would be, but the materials are very similar, and materials today and in the right lab technician’s hands can be, you know, hand custom built to just look more and more like a real, real tooth. Just about anybody could be a candidate for veneers, so long as they have a healthy gum foundation.
You know, we may need to adjust bite or address their bite concerns, but anybody could be a candidate for veneers. The evaluation process is going to be similar regardless of age, and disease doesn’t know any age, and really dentistry doesn’t either anymore with all the technology we have. Yeah, veneers can absolutely be an option for even the older population, again depending on what’s there already.
You know, if there’s already crowns there, you can only re-crown. If there’s older fillings or a lot of defects in the tooth besides the wear and tear, then a crown might be a better option, but a crown can be made to look just like a veneer. It’s really just an individualized case-by-case, tooth-by-tooth, because we can do combinations of veneers and crowns, and a lot of times that’s what the older population may need just because they’ve had more work done prior.
Crowns are when maybe we have old filling work, or bonding work, or cavities that are present around some of that, and we don’t have a lot of tooth structure to work with. Then a crown is going to surround the whole tooth and help hold it together. The materials are same, whether it be a crown or veneer, but a veneer is if maybe there’s worn or chipped areas, but the tooth for the most part is fairly intact, then a veneer is just a more conservative preparation that can be bonded on the tooth.
Everything is already scientifically measured out proportionally. There’s little jigs that we use based on their arch, the size of their arch, size of their teeth, their bite, and or the length of the teeth are determined by how their bite is. So all those things are prepared ahead of time or studied ahead of time with me and shared with the patient, and we put that all in what we call a diagnostic wax up onto their models so they can see it beforehand, but then we can use that to put temporaries on the teeth and make adjustments from there if there’s something they don’t like or they want to change before we actually make the porcelain.
The confidence and self-esteem go up 100 percent after even sometimes the temporaries go in, but certainly the final porcelain restorations that changes their whole musculature, their face from kind of negative to positive. It changes, you know, how they show their teeth versus trying to cover it up with their lips, just their whole outlook changes, and I think the smile is the gateway not only to the health of your body, but I think it’s the gateway to your personality in a lot of ways.
- Achieve a balanced, natural-looking smile
- Improve the color and shape of damaged teeth
- Enjoy durable results designed for long-term use
