Other than doing something nice for someone, winning the lottery, or finding a basket full of soft, cuddly puppies or kittens – one of the best reasons to smile comes from knowing that your smile won’t embarrass you. And, when you know you have a great smile, you’re far more confident and likely to smile… a lot!
Cosmetic enhancements like veneers, professional whitening, dental bonding, gum contouring, and more can help to improve your smile; all of which bolsters how you see yourself. Once your confidence kicks in, your entire perspective can change regarding your participation in social settings, work, and family along with your willingness to engage others.
While there are lots of ways cosmetic dentistry can help to enhance your smile and give you the confidence you need to smile boldly and broadly, one of the most requested options deals with something called, ‘veneers.’
What Are Veneers?
Typically, veneers are thin porcelain pieces that are custom-made to attach directly to the front of your teeth, often without the need to grind or shave the teeth. This allows a dentist to transform your smile without the need to drill on your natural teeth. Cosmetically, they’re frequently used to cover discolored teeth, chipped, cracked, or broken teeth, misaligned teeth, and to fill gaps between teeth.
Veneers are usually recommended only on teeth that are easily visible, like the front teeth, and used to improve the overall esthetics of your smile.
What’s the Difference Between Porcelain Veneers and Bonding?
Typically, patients usually associate porcelain when talking about veneers and composite material when discussing bonding. Technically, both porcelain and composites can be considered to be veneers, as both are fabricated to naturally enhance the brightness of your smile, are very durable, highly stain resistant, and esthetically pleasing among your existing teeth. Generally speaking, veneers are produced using dental porcelain.
Dental Porcelain: A dental material used in the dental industry to create realistic, natural-looking restorations such as veneers, crowns, and bridges. Dental porcelain has a hardness factor of seven on the Mohs Scale (one is the softest material and ten is the hardest, such as a diamond.) With a porcelain veneer, an ultra-thin layer of enamel is removed from a tooth’s surface prior to applying the overlay. This process is necessary in order to create a natural fit. As a result of preparing the tooth in this manner, this part of the process is irreversible because some of the surface enamel has been removed. Compared to composite veneers, porcelain veneers are stronger and offer the most natural-looking, tooth-like appearance. Additionally, they retain their exact same appearance over their service life, which usually lasts 2 to 3 times longer, or more, than that of bonding.
Composite: A man-made resin. Like porcelain veneers, composites (bonding) are used to enhance the whiteness or your smile and to seamlessly match the surrounding teeth. Composite veneers are bonded directly to the outer surface of each front tooth, often without having to remove any of a tooth’s surface enamel. Composite veneers usually last between five and ten years before they need replacement.
Farragut and Knoxville’s Cosmetic Dentist
As a cosmetic dentist we have the ability to care for our family and restorative dental patients on a very comprehensive level. Given that cosmetic dentistry provides complete oral health care with an emphasis on preventive and maintenance measures, corrects oral imperfections, and helps to enhance a patient’s overall facial esthetics, we’re extremely detail-oriented and meticulous regarding the caliber of our work and the care we extend to each and every patient.
If there’s anything we can do to help you or your family, whether it’s cosmetic (such as veneers or bonding), family, or restorative in nature, please contact us here.
