Dr. Hall,
I’m writing you from Germany. I’m a dental patient and getting two front crowns with e.max but my technician just won’t get them in the right colour.
My stumps are not dark and my teeth have a BL3 colour.

The problem with all the crowns I tried in was that they turned out too grey.

The technician has made a couple of sets of crowns already, and has experimented with pastes. When they tried in the first set of crowns they looked too grey. He then tried a bright white fit checker underneath, and they still looked grey.

So for the second set he made them with a bright white ingot and layered over it to cover the white. When we tried them in without any paste they looked grey again. This time he had a regular try-in paste in the colour light +. So he put that underneath the crown. The crown was not grey anymore but completely opaque and lifeless and had a terrible bright white. I did not like the crowns At all. The technician said he can’t do it better. I am so unhappy and don’t want to end up with two opaque front teeth that do not match my other teeth. Do you have any idea what went wrong? Did he use the wrong ingots? Or the wrong try in paste?
I thought maybe we should use a LT Bl3 ingot and a try in paste that is less opaque.
Please, please, if you have any suggestions I would love to hear from you.

I do have photos of both crowns which I could send to you.

Thank you so much!

Tilo from Germany

I asked for photographs, and here is what Tilo sent me. The top photo is a view from the side that shows the color discrepancy.

And the bottom photo is a view from the front, with lips relaxed, that to me was even more revealing because it shows that the shape is all wrong:

And here is what I wrote back to Tilo:

Tilo,
Let’s see if I can help you.

After seeing the photographs, I do think the problem is fundamental, that the dental lab technician isn’t very good with color. And more than that, the technician isn’t very good with aesthetics in general.

But I suspect it is even more than that. Your dentist is the one who selected this technician. Dentists who are accustomed to doing aesthetic work and who do it well will always choose a dental technician who can produce a high level of aesthetics.
Here is how I see your situation. This dentist and the technician I imagine have maybe done many crowns together, including crowns on front teeth. In their mind they have turned out fine. The patients maybe weren’t thrilled with the results, but they were willing to accept them. Now you come along and for you, the work simply isn’t good enough. They have been back and forth trying different colors, and it’s not good enough for you. If I am sizing up this situation correctly, you are becoming annoying to them. They think you should just accept what they have done–it’s good enough and you’re too demanding.

On the other hand, a dentist who does high quality aesthetic work would not put up with this level of work from his or her lab technician. It sounds to me that in this group of three–the dentist, the technician, and the patient–that you’re the lone voice thinking this isn’t good enough.

This Work Isn’t Good Enough

But you’re not completely alone, because I agree with you. The crowns simply aren’t good enough. But you may have to do more than get your dentist to pick another technician. Your dentist may not even know any technicians who are artistic enough for this case. I don’t know how things work in Germany, but I would brace yourself for maybe needing to find another dentist to finish this for you. I wouldn’t switch dentists immediately, but would ask your dentist if he knows how to find a technician with better aesthetic skills.

Having said that, let me get to the crowns. The problem isn’t just the shade and the grayness. The shape is a problem, too. They are too bulky and round-looking near the necks of the teeth. In the middle photograph of the second group where you have your lips relaxed, the crowns look awful! They are very prominent and make you look like a chipmunk!

Then, as you have written, there is a problem with the color. But it isn’t just the shade that is picked–the color is flat. The color of the crowns looks fairly uniform from the gumline to the biting edge. This is not how teeth look naturally. These crowns have kind of a uniform grayish tinge. If you look at your natural lateral incisors, you’ll see that they are kind of a very light creamy color near the gumline, with a very slight reddish-brown tinge. Toward the middle of the tooth they are lighter, with more white. Then, near the biting edge, they are fairly translucent with a more opaque halo at the very edge. So you see, it’s more involved than a simple color selection. Though I suspect that to your dentist and the lab technician, it’s a simple matter of selecting a shade. What I did when I was doing crowns on front teeth is that I would draw a large color map of the tooth and I would diagram the different color areas. I would have a basic background color that I would ask for, one that I would select from the standard shade guide, and then I had different tint tabs that I would use as a reference and explain to the technician where I wanted these color accents and variations. You are getting nothing like this from your team.

Maybe the best thing I can do for you is to encourage you to stick to your demands. Don’t let them cement these crowns permanently, but insist that they match and look natural in your mouth. There are dentists and technicians who can do this level of work.

– Dr. Hall

Do you have a comment? We’d love to hear from you. Enter your comment below.

Click here to ask Dr. Hall a question of your own.