Dr. Hall,
I am interested in porcelain veneers, so I did some research and found different types: Lumineers, Da Vinci, and MAC veneers. My question is, which types out in the market nowadays have an excellent results? Thanks you.
—Marjorie from New Jersey
Marjorie,
Thank you for your question. You’re going to think I’m giving you a strange answer, but I’ll explain it below. The answer is that all the porcelain veneers that you mention give beautiful results and all of them give crummy results.
Let me give you a similar question. Which artistic material produces the most beautiful paintings: watercolor, oil, or acrylic? The answer is the same: all of them are great and all of them are crummy. There are profoundly beautiful pieces of art done with oil, and there are profoundly ugly pieces of art done with oil. Likewise for each of these veneers you mention.
I strongly recommend against asking your cosmetic dentist to use a particular brand of porcelain. Besides straining your relationship with that dentist, you are quite possibly going to be pushing your cosmetic dentist out of his or her comfort zone. Creating a new smile is an art. Let artists choose their materials, the ones they are comfortable with. All the different materials have different properties, and getting the most out of them requires some experience with that material. Also, most cosmetic dentists have a close working relationship with a particular laboratory technician, and the technician and dentist make a team. They understand each other and work as a team to create beautiful results.
MAC Veneers
Having said that, let me tell you a little more about MAC veneers. This is a name given to porcelain veneers produced by a particular dental laboratory, MicroDental. Several years ago, MicroDental created a division where they put their best cosmetic technicians and called it the Micro Advanced Cosmetic Division. Yes, they do beautiful work. They’re advertising now to the public, and the ads, as you can see on the right, are very appealing. But there are many other excellent cosmetic dental laboratory technicians who don’t work for MicroDental. And I believe this is the largest such lab, so they are accurate to say that more cosmetic dentists use their laboratory than any other. But that statement is deceptive, because there are thousands of laboratories, and many first rate ones, and it’s only a small minority of cosmetic dentists who use MicroDental.
They use pressed ceramic for their veneers. Yes, they look beautiful. And they’re strong. But they are also considerably thicker than other veneers, and I don’t believe they are more beautiful than, say, feldspathic porcelain. When I was in practice and I had a case that called for pressed ceramic, I would usually send it to MicroDental, because they were very good with that material. But most of my work was with feldspathic porcelain because I felt that worked best for most cases.
Related information:
- There is a lot of advertising for Lumineers. Read the pros and cons of this brand.
- How much should you expect porcelain veneers to cost?
- When a lot of tooth structure is missing, because of decay or old fillings, you may need to get porcelain crowns instead. These can also look very beautiful.
- Read about DaVinci veneers.
- You also may want to know about JK Veneers or CEREC.
- Read Dr. Hall’s comments about GlamSmile, a shortcut method of doing porcelain veneers.
This content was written by Dr. David Hall.
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