Restoring Your Smile with Porcelain Veneers

Smiles can convey a lot about one’s personality and can often create effective, lasting impressions on others. Unfortunately our teeth are not indestructible and often are damaged by some foods we eat, accidents, or by day-to-day wear. An easy way to create a balanced, healthy-looking, and beautiful smile is by visiting a cosmetic dentist and getting porcelain veneers.

Porcelain veneers are a quick and effective way to restore dental defects and recreate the smile that you always dreamed of. Porcelain veneers are very thin shells of extremely durable porcelain that are bonded to the front of the teeth. When done correctly, these veneers will look just like the rest of your teeth and will last for ten or more years if taken care of consistently.

Problems that Porcelain Veneers Fix

Porcelain veneers are used today to fix a wide variety of dental defects:

• Discolored teeth.
  
  
• Uneven shaping of teeth.
  
  
• Slight crookedness.
  
  
• Small chips.
  
  
• Small but visible cracks in the teeth.
  
  
• Gaps in your smile.
  

For many patients veneers are a preferable alternative to braces as they do not require any brackets, long treatment times, and do not cause any soreness due to teeth movement. Veneers can be placed on the teeth in as little as two visits to your dentist.

Veneers are placed directly on the tooth enamel, which can cover worn, dulled and discolored areas. Dental defects such as the ones listed above may be the result of genetic disposition or, generally, they are a result of habits and aging. Whatever your dental defects may be, porcelain veneers may be a suitable and effective way of recreating a bright, beautiful smile.

Steps to Obtain Porcelain Veneers

It is important to contact your dentist to review the procedure and go over any questions you may have about porcelain veneers and your teeth. Your dentist will take photos of your teeth and make a bite impression in order to ensure that the veneers closely resemble the rest of your mouth. The veneers can be shaded and shaped to match the color, texture, and contour of your teeth. Temporary veneers may be used while your permanent veneers are being made.

Porcelain veneers are made of exceptional quality and will be bonded securely to the tooth faces in order to create a natural and alluring appearance. Veneers are stain resistant and strong, but must be cared for like your natural teeth.

If taken care of correctly, porcelain veneers can last ten years or more, lasting up to a lifetime in those patients who carefully maintain safe eating and hygiene habits. Porcelain veneers, like your natural teeth, are not indestructible and need to be brushed and flossed just like the rest of your teeth. It is optimal to avoid chewing hard objects such as pens and pencils to keep damage to your veneers at a minimum.