Cosmetic Dentistry Edmonton | Dental Veneers VS Dental Bonding
At the Tooth Doctor, we want you to feel the best and most confident you can and oftentimes this is seen in your smile. When you feel good about your teeth, you tend to smile more and exude confidence in your everyday life. This is so much simpler to achieve when you are born with a great set of teeth and have great dental genes to match.
What if you are not so lucky though? That is where the Tooth Doctor shines. We can help you by not only taking good care of your overall dental health with our general dentistry treatments through checkups, cleanings, and fillings, but we can also help with cosmetic dentistry procedures. Some of the best procedures to help with your smile are teeth whitening, and teeth straightening. We have gone into great detail on these two already in previous articles.
Now we would like to share other options to help your smile look bright, fresh, straight, and natural. Some of the top cosmetic procedures include dental veneers, dental bonding, dental crowns, inlays, onlays, and dental implants.
So today let’s settle the Dental Veneers VS Dental Bonding debate, or not. As there are many solutions to all kinds of issues when it comes to your teeth.
Come in for a free consultation
The first thing to do is to call the tooth doctor at 780-758-6684 to book a free consultation with one of our dentists to find out how we can help you. You can also visit our website to find out more information. We would love to sit down with you and devise a plan that is unique to you based on your needs, desires, and budget.
Our goal at the tooth doctor is to save as many teeth as possible for as long as possible for as cheap as possible. We have three locations to serve you best. Two are in the city of Edmonton and one is in Tofield, Alberta.
Our patients come to us because they want to improve the look of their smile, not just because they may have tooth pain. Dental veneers are a great way to achieve that. These thin, tooth colored porcelain or resin-composite layers attach right to the front of the tooth and cover the whole front. This improves the appearance of your smile instantly.
Dental Veneers to treat discoloration
You can treat a broken or chipped tooth, but even a severely discolored or smaller than average tooth can get an upgrade. You can get just one tooth treated to help with a specific problem, but many clients opt for six to eight teeth treatment to create an even and symmetrical look. Since they are the most seen, the top front eight teeth are the most commonly treated.
There are different ways for a cosmetic dentist to apply veneers. Traditionally they are placed on the tooth by first grinding and removing some of the tooth and its enamel. This is an irreversible procedure but allows for proper placement. Unfortunately, because it is more invasive it can be painful, and you may want a local anesthetic.
Lightweight veneers options are available
If you decide to go the no-prep veneers route, you will find it less invasive as minimal work is needed to prep the tooth. With no prep veneers only the enamel is removed and therefore no anesthetics are necessary.
There are two types of veneers that are under the heavy prep category, porcelain and resin based. There are advantages to either choice. Porcelain veneers cost more but last longer as it is stronger. Resin based can often be applied in one visit whereas porcelain requires more visits to the dentist. Porcelains do not stain as easily but resin is easier to fix. Unfortunately, resin is more prone to damage, and this is likely why it costs less.
Some of the common cosmetic occurrences that dental veneers can fix are broken and chipped teeth, severe discoloration and uneven colored teeth that don’t respond to whitening treatment, gaps in between teeth, smaller teeth that don’t look the average size and pointed or misshapen teeth. The beauty of veneers is that they can last up to a decade. This is a somewhat permanent investment but down the road you will need to upgrade because eventually they will need it.
Dental Bonding can be used more precisely
Dental bonding like dental veneers is another procedure that can help improve your smile. Unlike veneers dental bonding is not applied to the whole front of the tooth, it is used for smaller portions. Bonding is a painless way to make minor repairs to your teeth and is also known as bonded restoration. Composite resin is placed on the tooth and once it is shaped light is used to harden it. It is easily matched to your other teeth’s color.
If you have a missing piece of tooth or have a chipped tooth bonding can help. If you have a broken tooth, bonding can restore it to the right size. It is even possible to just paint over the tooth to help match the color to the teeth around it.
One tooth at a time
The tooth being treated is isolated from the ones around it, so none of the composite resin is able to reach any of the other teeth. A thin clear plastic film is used to do this. Then a mild chemical is used to etch the tooth so that the bonding resin can bond or stick to the enamel of the tooth. The resin is matched to the other teeth and is distributed in layers. Light hardens each layer and after the last layer is hardened, the whole thing is shaped and polished to form a tooth shape.
It has a natural and smooth look when it is finished. As with almost everything, your tooth that is bonded should be examined and polished on a regular basis. Eventually the resin will wear down but this is not a problem because the dentist can just add more layers the same way when it was originally formed and touch it up.