Transform Your Smile With Porcelain Veneers

Do you feel you have an unsightly smile and hesitate to smile in front of others? Do you find yourself hiding your teeth with your hand when you smile for selfies, or do you smile with your mouth closed? Dental or porcelain veneers can come to your rescue and significantly transform your smile, which you would want to flaunt.

These dental laminates are custom-made porcelain shells that match your tooth color and cover the tooth to hide imperfections like chipped or stained teeth, gaps between teeth, cracks, etc. 

Read on to learn more about porcelain veneers and how they help you immensely enhance the shape, size, and color of your teeth.

Properties of Dental Laminates

Dental laminates stick to the outer surface of your teeth and need contouring of your tooth before the dentist glues them on it.

• Come in a wide range of colors- Composite resin laminates can appear chalky or too white as they come in limited color options. With porcelain veneers, you can select just the right color that goes well with your skin tone, teeth color, age, white eyes, etc.
• Highly durable – Porcelain is known for its sturdiness and is leaps and bounds ahead of ceramics or composite resin materials in terms of strength. If you maintain them properly, they can last you long, up to ten to fifteen years (or even an entire lifetime)
• Aesthetically pleasing – These dental laminates are translucent and allow light to pass through them. This makes the veneers reflect light just like your natural tooth. Your dentist would determine how translucent the laminate should be (based on the color of your enamel) for a perfectly blended effect.
• Damage resistant – Apart from high strength, porcelain is also stain resistant. They do not get stained easily if you drink highly pigmented beverages like tea, coffee, or wine.

What Problems Can Porcelain Veneers Rectify?

Dental laminates can address a wide range of cosmetic issues with your oral structure, as described below:

• These tooth laminates can fix discoloration in teeth due to various reasons (stains from drugs like tetracycline, root canal treatment, large resin filling, excessive fluoride, etc.).
• If your teeth have worn down due to wear and tear or any other reason, you could get them back in shape with porcelain veneers.
• Any cracks or chips in teeth can be fixed with these veneers.
• These dental laminates can rectify misaligned and uneven or irregular teeth (such as teeth with bulges or craters).
• You can close the space or gaps between teeth with porcelain veneers.

How Is Porcelain Veneer Applied?

The procedure for applying dental laminates is the least invasive, and you can get it done without any anesthesia or probably need only local anesthesia. 

• The doctor would first assess your teeth to know what laminate color is needed and take your teeth’s impression with a digital scanner.
• The doctor would send the impression to the lab to use the model for preparing custom-made veneer. It would take between two to four weeks for the laminate to get ready.
• Once the laminates are ready, the doctor will reshape your tooth by removing some enamel that is equal to the thickness of the veneer being applied.
• Before trimming the enamel, your dentist would decide whether anesthesia is needed.
• The dentist would then apply dental adhesive on your tooth’s surface and fix the veneer on the top.
• Finally, the laminates are polished to give them their final look.

Who Can Get Dental Laminates Done?

Anyone with the following oral characteristics can get porcelain veneers done:

• You should have healthy teeth and gums.
• You must maintain good oral hygiene as you would need to take care of your laminates the same way you take care of your natural pearly whites.
• You must have sufficient tooth enamel for the veneers to bond properly to your tooth.
• Veneers can not correct teeth with severe misalignments or crookedness (or if you have malocclusion, i.e., misaligned bite). You would need to have moderately straight teeth to get this procedure done.

Benefits of Porcelain Veneers

Dental laminates are a popular choice for discolored, misaligned, chipped, or cracked teeth. They can also replace missing teeth with artificial ones that look just like your natural teeth. Its many benefits include:

• They improve your smile significantly by fixing all types of cosmetic issues.
• They are custom-made for your teeth, so they look very close to your natural teeth. They fit your teeth perfectly, and you do not need to worry about them falling off.

Summing Up

Porcelain veneers are wafer-thin custom-made shells that fit over your teeth and enhance your smile by fixing many issues such as chipped, stained, cracked, gapped, or misaligned teeth.