Dear Dr. Hall,
I have a perplexing situation, and while it sounds very familiar to many of the other questions you have received, it has an interesting twist. I recently just received 10 porcelain veneers on my upper teeth and while I love the shape, size, the color is still not as vivid as my original teeth.
The cosmetic dentist is very good and has received much recognition so I’m not worried about his skills. He said I received the whitest shade possible for translucent veneers. And while they are very white, I don’t feel like they are as bright or white as my original teeth.
My dentist is offering to redo them, with the help of the lab tech. They both say that in order to achieve a whiter and brighter look, they will have to use an opaque veneer, which often looks like Chiclets…a look I was trying to avoid. He says that many celebrities opt for this veneer because it is much whiter, so that leaves me to think that maybe they are not as “fake looking” as they lead on to be. My question is, is there any way to have whiter veneers to achieve the desired whiteness without having them look silly? Or is there a way to make them semi-translucent? Thanks for you time.
Sincerely,
Erin in Texas
Erin,
I hope you really have an expert cosmetic dentist/artist because that makes all the difference. It sounds like it, because of the response you say you’re getting from him. Though he does sound a little too timid about giving you white, white veneers, so I’m a little skeptical about his artistic passion.
Yes, many celebrities get the bright white teeth because they want to look dazzling, but when you look at them up close the teeth do have a fake look to them. But they don’t look silly, I wouldn’t say. I often did porcelain veneers like this. We called them “ballistic white” and some people loved them and others wanted a more natural look. You do have the trade off with opacity. I never had people get ballistic white porcelain veneers and then later indicate that they wished they had gone more natural. I did sometimes have people who chose a more natural look and later wished they had gotten whiter teeth.
If you want your smile to shine from across the room so that you look dazzling and attract attention, then I’d go with the ballistic white. If you want your teeth to look sparkling but more natural, so that you have a pretty smile but a more normal-looking smile, then I’d tone it down a little and go for more translucent. This is the great thing with cosmetic dentistry when it is done by a real artist–you have this latitude to project the kind of personality and image you want.
There are things that your cosmetic dentist and his laboratory technician can do with surface texture and gloss that can make your teeth sparkle more without going with the white, white look, so that’s an option you can consider.
And you should be able to get the veneers somewhat whiter than your original teeth and still have them look translucent and natural. It’s when you get them a lot whiter than your own teeth that you have to use more opaquer.
– Dr. Hall
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About David A. Hall
Dr. David A. Hall was one of the first 40 accredited cosmetic dentists in the world. He practiced cosmetic dentistry in Iowa, and in 1990 earned his accreditation with the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is now president of Infinity Dental Web, a company in Mesa, Arizona that does advanced internet marketing for dentists.
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