3 Keys to Keeping Dental Veneers From Looking Fake

“Why do some veneers look fake?”

This is a question I get asked almost anytime I bring up dental veneers as a potential treatment option for my patients.

As “cosmetic dentistry” has become more and more popular, more patients turn to veneers for a variety of reasons, including to correct spacing, discoloration, or to improve their overall smile.

Unfortunately, all too often, those veneers don’t blend well with the patient’s other teeth, or they are made to be too white, too opaque, or unnaturally sized so that they stand out like a sore thumb. What I tell my patients who ask me this question is that the best veneers we can do are the ones no one knows are there.

Here are three steps we take at Kidder Dental  in Baton Rouge… opens in a new window to Google Maps… to make sure veneers look beautiful and natural:

1. Photography

One of the most critical pieces of equipment I have at my disposal is my digital camera.

Anytime we start discussing improving the esthetics of a patient’s smile, I immediately take out my camera and start taking photographs. We take several images in every cosmetic case we do. This allows us to adequately capture a current visual of the patient’s smile and improve the communication between our patient and us.

It also allows us to communicate better with our laboratory technician, who will be creating the veneers. Without photographs, the technician has to guess about the appearance of the remaining teeth. There are subtle variations in color and texture that cannot be appreciated without high-quality photographs. Merely writing a shade on a piece of paper results in veneers that don’t blend well with the patient’s existing smile.

2. Use a high-quality lab

Without a doubt, the most essential step in making natural-looking dental veneers is using a high-quality lab. The laboratory technician is the person who sculpts the veneers out of porcelain. It is truly an art and something that, like many things in life, you get what you pay for.

There are less expensive options available to make veneers, but we refuse to make any compromises that might sacrifice the quality of our veneers.

The patient featured in our blog photo had three veneers and one crown redone, and as you can see, everything looks natural, and the patient was thrilled with her results.

3. Begin with the end in mind

In creating a beautiful smile with dental veneers, it is vital to know precisely how we want the final result to look. To do that, we again utilize our lab technician.

In most cases, we can utilize the initial models of the patient’s teeth to create a mock-up of what we want with the final result. In many cases, we can even try the mock-up in the patient’s mouth so they can truly see what the outcome of their treatment will be before we ever touch their natural teeth.

Our Baton Rouge dentists use the mock-up to create temporaries so that the patient can test-drive our plan and make sure his or her speech and chewing and jaw function are unaffected by the new smile.

Veneers can be a fantastic way to correct aesthetic problems with your teeth in a way that no one will know what changes we made, only that suddenly, your smile looks terrific.

We would love to sit down with you and discuss how veneers might make your smile more beautiful. You can make an appointment for a cosmetic consultation by one of these convenient means:

• Call us at: 225-761-8585
• Email us at: info@kidderdental.com