Dental Veneers

Dental veneers can improve length, shape, colour, contour and alignment of your teeth.

Veneers are usually either a laboratory manufactured ceramic casing or a composite resin material just like the materials used in white fillings, which is applied similarly to paint.

Here at Belle Dental, we focus our efforts into composite veneers, as they do not require any loss of existing tooth structure. Ceramic veneers, on the other hand, do require some form of preparation of the tooth in order to place the veneers. This is because ceramic veneers are thicker, and therefore need the tooth to be reduced so the size looks natural. The grinding down of the teeth is why Dr Huszti and Belle Dental would recommend against ceramic veneers if composite veneers are an option.

Our concerns with ceramic veneers

  1. Many dentists claim that the veneers are approximately 0.3mm thick. This is true. However, is the dentist capable of preparing a tooth to this minimal degree? I have seen this on occasions, however, I believe that it is rare to find operators with this degree of skill on a consistent basis – I therefore recommend no preparation as ideal for veneers, as no preparation = no risk (the procedure IS reversible).
  2. Assuming a preparation of 0.3mm at the margin of the ceramic veneer – i.e. the thinnest portion of the veneer – the veneer would likely be between 0.5-0.7mm thick at the thickest portion of the veneer. This amount of reduction of tooth structure could be represented by the thickness of a decimal point between the zero and the three in the first line of this paragraph! That amount of dental enamel reduction represents 1/2 to 1/3 of the enamel thickness – this would reduce the durability of the whole tooth by at least 50%.
  3. By placing a composite resin veneer over the unprepared tooth – the rigidity of the tooth would actually increase.
  4. Ceramic veneers are notoriously difficult to repair. Yes, they can be repaired with composite resin – however, the optical characteristics of resin are different to ceramic – so the join is almost always evident.
  5. Redoing the ceramic veneers poses its own problems in terms of shade matching.
  6. Direct resin veneers can be repaired or even completely resurfaced with resin to create a completely invisible repair.

 

Before and Afters of BelleDentals Composite Resin Veneers

For more information about our treatments or to book an appointment please don’t hesitate to call us on (02) 4946 9122