3 Ways A Dental Veneer Can Help Your Smile – Other Than Covering A Chipped Tooth

A dental veneer is an extremely thin, lab-crafted piece of porcelain that your cosmetic dentistry specialist can bond over the front of a damaged natural tooth. Dental veneers are often used when a natural tooth becomes chipped but is in otherwise in great health, which doesn't necessitate the use of a dental crown. But dental veneers can be used to treat a few other hard-to-treat dental issues.

Here are three other dental issues that can be treated with a dental veneer.

Covering Difficult Dental Stains

Surface-level dental stains on the enamel come from food, drink, and tobacco use and are typically treatable with teeth bleaching at your cosmetic dentistry office. But if you're teeth lack a healthy enamel layer, the stains can attach to the dentin. Dentin can also become stained due to certain medications or simply genetics.

Dentin stains don't respond to bleaching treatments and you could feel stuck with yellowed, unsightly teeth. But dental veneers can create the look of white teeth without costing you any of the otherwise healthy natural tooth. The porcelain veneers can come dyed a tooth-color and have a small level of translucency similar to natural dentin.

Veneers are a better choice than resin bonds to cover staining because the porcelain is stain-resistant and the resin is not. If you have a past history of dental staining, resin bonds could end up as stained as your natural teeth and need replacing sooner.

Oversized or Undersized Tooth

Oversized and undersized teeth can both be corrected with the application of a dental veneer. Your dentist can shave down an oversized tooth so that it is slightly undersized and the dental veneer can make up the difference. For an undersized tooth, the dentist simply needs to create a thicker, larger veneer to make the tooth the appropriate size.

The ability of a veneer to be made as thin or thick as necessary makes veneers better at size corrections than the thicker dental crowns. Resin bonds can also correct size issues but the bonds are molded straight onto the tooth, which limits the dentist's ability to create a precise shape and size. Veneers are created in a lab so the dentist can be more precise.

Dental Gap

Large dental gaps might require orthodontics to close the space between teeth. Smaller gaps can often be closed with the use of dental veneers. The dentist can either use a slightly oversized veneer on one tooth or both teeth on each side of the gap to make the size difference less noticeable.

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