An Effortless Beautiful Smile
A lot of patients come in asking us about dental veneers. And the first thing I wanted to do is differentiate what a veneer is from a crown because a lot of times patients can interchange those and confuse those. So a dental crown, or a cap, is a porcelain restoration that completely covers the tooth front, back, sides, top; all the way around.
A veneer is basically a piece of porcelain that we place on the front of the tooth. This is a great option for patients who just want to cosmetically enhance their teeth, whether it’s from staining as a child, a lot of times medications you can take can alter the appearance of your teeth and slowly shade them in color. Sometimes patients have smaller teeth and they’ll have gaps between their teeth and they don’t want to go through the process of braces or reconstructing their smile through crowns. And what we can do is actually place veneers, and what it’ll do is close those spaces. It’ll change the color. A lot of times, we can alter the gum line, transition the teeth to a point where the veneers will actually restore, just from a cosmetic standpoint, teeth that are otherwise healthy, great teeth. They just need a little cosmetic lift. So, it’s not somebody who broke a tooth to the point where it needs a crown or there’s decay. It’s usually done in a cosmetic setting where we want to just improve the cosmetics, whether it’s widening the teeth, changing the shade, or just making an overall more aesthetic approach.