Dr. Hall,
I recently had 6 porcelain veneers placed and was unhappy with the bulkiness from two of the veneers and my dentist reshaped the veneers by filing down the veneers and when he did it changed the color from a pearl/grayish white to a whiter lighter color, which I like however, now the veneers are dull, no shine. Is there anything that can be done to add shine. And will my veneers now stain? I thought that veneers where the same color all throughout and was surprised the color changed with the filing/reshaping.
Help!
Candace in Ohio
Dear Candace,
Your question is a great springboard for making the point about the unforeseen difficulties that can occur when you don’t have an expert cosmetic dentist doing your smile. When dentists aren’t passionate about the appearance of the work (and well over 90% of them aren’t), they don’t take the trouble to learn all of these important details.
This dentist bonded on porcelain veneers that were too bulky, and you didn’t like the color. A true dentist/artist will make sure, before they are bonded, that they are beautiful in your eyes, and this won’t even come up. I hear this all the time in my e-mails. The patient got home, studied his or her smile in the mirror, and wasn’t happy. This is because dentists are trained that they know best, and it’s not in their nature to let the patient be in charge of whether or not they like how their smile looks. This mistake doesn’t happen with a true cosmetic dentist.
So you came back and told him the front two were too bulky. Now I’m not absolutely sure of this next point, but it seems to be true from what you’re telling me, that this dentist was then on unfamiliar ground. He ground the color off, which may have surprised him, too. And now he doesn’t know how to bring back the gloss. And yes, with the glaze gone on the porcelain veneers, they will pick up stain quite readily.
The dentist can bring back the shine with meticulous polishing techniques using diamond-impregnated ultrafine polishing wheels or pastes, with which he is probably unfamiliar. But even if he does that, you’ve still got two problems that I think are serious. 1) The color of these two adjusted veneers (you didn’t say if he ground down just these two or all of them–I’m guessing he just did the two) is probably flat now. I doubt that they have the natural color gradient that teeth are supposed to have. 2) You don’t like the color of the other four veneers, and they now don’t match these two.
I would recommend a second opinion from a true artist/dentist on our list of Ohio cosmetic dentists. And I think you should get a complete re-do of this case until you are truly thrilled with how they look, because you paid for a beautiful smile and you didn’t get it. But you will maybe be satisfied with just getting these polished.
Dr. Hall
Related information:
MAC Veneers are one brand of porcelain veneers that have the color on the surface
Find an expert cosmetic dentist
Click here for a list of Ohio cosmetic dentists.
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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