Dental Handpieces

What is a veneer?

It’s a very thin wafer, or shell, which is bonded to the front surface of your tooth, providing an instant new appearance to that tooth.

It can be sized and shaped a little differently than your existing tooth, so that a small chip is hidden, and a small gap filled. It covers staining and yellowing. It can be given just the right variation in its thickness to cover slight crookedness in the tooth.

What is porcelain?

Dental porcelain is a glass-like substance which by itself is brittle, but when bonded to your teeth, becomes hard and durable. Like glass, it’s highly stain-resistant. It comes in a wide variety of shades, so that your dentist can choose the shade that best matches your natural teeth.

Porcelain mimics enamel

Porcelain has the same light-reflecting properties as natural tooth enamel. The light penetrates the porcelain, as it penetrates the enamel, and bounces back off the layer beneath, which in the case of porcelain veneers, is the dental bonding used to attach them. In this way, they have the same sort of lustrous sheen that your natural teeth have.

The procedure

Two visits are required. In the first visit:

· Your dentist will sculpt the teeth to be treated, and scuff their surface a little. This prepares them to bond well to the porcelain veneer.

Perfect White Teeth With Porcelain Veneers

Porcelain veneers are the instant way to perfect white teeth today. If you ever wanted a beautiful smile like a movie star but were scared of the pain and costs involved, then porcelain veneers are the solution.

Cosmetic dentistry has become very popular and affordable. Today bad, crooked or stained teeth can easily and quickly be fixed with porcelain veneers. A tooth gap can be closed instantly without the use of braces.

Porcelain veneers are very thin layers of porcelain or composite resin which are directly affixed to the surface of your teeth. The only reason why your tooth needs preparation in advance is because your tooth surface might become too big when you attach a veneer onto it. That's why some enamel must be removed first but this involves very little pain. If necessary then a local anesthetic can be used.

Usually not more than just 0.5 mm of the tooth surface needs to be removed but if you want to fix crooked or decayed teeth then more treatment might be required. Just one week later your custom-made porcelain veneers have been manufactured in the laboratory and will be fixed onto your teeth by your cosmetic dentist.

You can have a complete smile makeover in a few days that way, with just a little pain and treatment involved. A week later you revisit your dentist again for verification and then you are done. Your porcelain veneers will last for many years and don't need special maintenance.

Porcelain is a very robust material and gives a perfect natural look. The only disadvantage of porcelain is the weakness in tensile strength. Your veneers could probably break if you chew on hard nuts or bones but that is also true for your normal teeth. If this happens, then your dentist can replace the veneer with a new one.

Porcelain veneers are not cheap. They cost up to $1,200 per tooth but it is a long time investment. Composite resin veneers are very good as well but not as long lasting and slightly less aesthetic. However, the costs are much less, about the half of porcelain veneers. Compared to the process of a smile makeover in the past where you faced months of pain with dental implants and new crowns, veneers are a major advance in cosmetic dentistry.

Teeth whitening or bleaching is another way to white teeth but you can only make your teeth whiter that way and not making any changes in the arrangement of your teeth. Bleaching can be done for $300-$800 for all your teeth. For this price you get one single porcelain veneer. But tooth whitening only lasts one or two years before you must repeat it while porcelain veneers can last up to twenty years.