At Willowbrook Dental Clinic, our dentists can treat gaps, chips, stains, or misshapen teeth using porcelain veneers.
What are porcelain veneers?
Veneers are thin, custom-made shells made from tooth-coloured materials (such as porcelain) designed to cover the front side of your teeth.
The procedure by which we apply veneers should require little or no anesthesia, and can be the ideal choice for improving the appearance of your front teeth.
Porcelain veneers are usually placed to try and mask discolourations, brighten teeth, and improve your smile.
Why a porcelain veneer?
Porcelain veneers can be an excellent alternative to dental crowns in many situations since they provide a more conservative approach to changing a tooth's colour, size, or shape.
Veneers can mask undesirable defects such as tetracycline stains, irregularities from an injury to the teeth, or discolouration as a result of root canal therapy.
Patients with gaps between their front teeth, or chips in their front teeth also have excellent results with veneers.
Generally, veneers will last for many years provided you take good care of them.
The porcelain veneers procedure usually takes place in 3 parts, over 3 separate appointments:
Diagnosis & Treatment Planning
It's important that you take an active role in the treatment planning phase. Spend time with us in the decision-making and planning of how you want your smile to look. It may be necessary to have more than one consultation for you to feel comfortable that we understand your objectives.
Preparation of Teeth
In preparation for the porcelain veneers, the teeth are lightly buffed down to make enough room for the added thickness of the veneer. Typically, about half a millimetre of the tooth is removed, and this portion of the procedure might require a local anesthetic.
Next, A mould is taken of the teeth, which is sent to the laboratory at which the veneers will be fabricated. This usually takes 1 - 2 weeks.
Bonding
The final appointment is when the veneers will be bonded to the teeth. Your dentist will first fit the veneer on your tooth temporarily to evaluate the fit and colour.
Once the dentist is satisfied that your veneer looks right, he will apply it permanently with a special bonding cement, and then cure and harden it with a special light beam.
Finally, he will remove any excess cement, evaluate your bite, and make any final adjustments necessary.
Results
While porcelain veneers are reasonable facsimiles of natural teeth, they are not perfect replacements. It is not unusual to see slight variations in the colour of porcelain veneers on close inspection. In fact, this occurs even in natural teeth.
Nonetheless, this procedure might enhance the appearance of your smile, and may also improve your self-esteem.
We often recommend that our patients who are having significant restorative work done (crowns, implants, veneers, bridges, for instance) do a course of bleaching prior to having the work done.
Otherwise, the restorative work colour will be matched to the more yellow or grey teeth, and there is no way to change the colour afterwards.