How To Avoid Getting Bad Porcelain Veneers (Part 4)

Getting porcelain veneers can be fun or traumatic, depending on whether the final outcome is beautiful or badly flawed. Learn the 10 most common mistakes when getting porcelain veneers, and how to avoid them.

You are reading part 4 of a four part series describing the 10 most common mistakes we've seen dentists make when placing dental veneers on their patients. By reading this series, you will be empowered with the knowledge to help you avoid choosing a dentist who is lacking experience or training in cosmetic procedures such as veneers. The skill required for doing a total smile makeover -- and making it look extraordinarily beautiful -- is an art that cannot be learned in a weekend continuing education seminar. It takes months of intense learning and practice.

The first 7 most common mistakes were covered in the previous articles in this series. Please go back and read them first if you haven’t read them already. Now, shall we continue….

8. The eighth mistake we’d like to cover here is miscommunication or a lack of communication with the patient. When a cosmetic dentist in Colorado Springs is consulting with you about your smile and the smile makeover recommendations that he has, he should not be rushed and should take as much time as needed to answer all your questions and address your concerns. Most dentists in Colorado Springs will do a wax-up to show you how your smile can be improved and how the veneers will look on your teeth, and they will also show you several before and after photos of previous clients. He should be able to explain the current esthetic state of your gum line, and whether you require periodontal surgery for optimal results with the veneers. You presumably will have questions about the materials used, such as the ceramics, the hemostatic agents, the dental cement, etc., and your dentist should be able to answer these questions without getting defensive or rushing through the conversation.

9. The next mistake is taking on too many clients at one time. When you are paying top dollar for a cosmetic dental procedure, you don’t want to feel like a number on an assembly line. Your cosmetic dentist in Colorado Springs should be focused on you during your appointments. If you have to sit in the waiting room longer than fifteen minutes past your appointment, if the dentist seems rushed or can’t remember the specifics of your case, or if you feel like you’re being herded like cattle along with the other patients in the office at the same time, you should move on to another dentist who schedules his patients appropriately.

10. Finally, the last -- but not the least -- problem to look out for is a dentist who cannot tell you what certifications he has or what professional associations he is a member of. Who did your dentist learn cosmetic dentistry techniques from? How long has he been studying and practicing cosmetic dentistry? Does he teach other dentists his techniques?

We hope you have enjoyed this series!

How To Avoid Getting Bad Porcelain Veneers (Part 3)

Getting porcelain veneers can be fun or traumatic, depending on whether the final outcome is beautiful or badly flawed. Learn the 10 most common mistakes when getting porcelain veneers, and how to avoid them.

This is part 3 of a series explaining the top 10 most common mistakes made by inexperienced dentists doing porcelain veneers, and how you can avoid picking the wrong dentist. We also briefly described in the first part of the series how amazing well-done veneers can look. It is our goal that after reading this series, you will be able to choose the right cosmetic dentist in Colorado Springs for you and avoid any major mistakes.

5. The fourth mistake we see when patients come to our office with veneers done by another dentist is intense staining under the veneers. If the dentist uses a ferric sulfate solution as a hemostatic (anti-bleeding) agent during the procedure, this creates a major problem. This can result in dark black stains under the veneers that can appear in a matter of weeks or months. The proper method for stopping bleeding of the gums during a veneer procedure is to use an aluminum chloride solution. When you are interviewing a potential dentist to do your veneers, it can be a wise idea to simply ask what the dentist uses as a hemostatic agent. If he’s using ferric sulfate, keep looking for the right dentist because you haven’t found him yet!

6. Another red flag to watch out for is the dentist who does not provide before and after photos of previous cases. (Teeth-only photographs can be very telling of the dentist’s artistic abilities without revealing the identity of the patient.) First of all, it is important for dentist’s to document every step of the case with photograph and x-ray footage. This is critical for maintaining a precise record of every procedure he does, and it is important for legal reasons as well as for providing patient “testimonials” in marketing materials. Therefore, if a dentist in Colorado Springs is unable to show you before and after photos of successful cases, this is a sign that either the dentist has no experience or he is terrible at charting and keeping himself out of legal trouble.

7. This next mistake may be an honest and somewhat benign error, but it could be a sign of lack of experience. When making impressions of your mouth for the temporary and permanent veneers, your cosmetic dentist in Colorado Springs should make two impressions. Unless your dentist is utilizing high-tech digital impressions, it is actually quite common for there to be a flaw in the impression. He may send it off to the laboratory for your veneers to be constructed, and then end up with the lab sending requesting a second impression because of a flaw in the first one.

Come back next week for part 4 in this series.

How To Avoid Getting Bad Porcelain Veneers (Part 2)

Getting porcelain veneers can be fun or traumatic, depending on whether the final outcome is beautiful or badly flawed. Learn the 10 most common mistakes when getting porcelain veneers, and how to avoid them.

We wrote in part 1 of this series about why getting porcelain veneers can be an incredibly fun and rewarding experience for both the patient and the dentist. The results of good veneers done by a cosmetic dentist in Colorado Springs with an exceptional amount of training and experience can be life-changing. Because a smile is one of the most prominent features of the face, a total smile makeover can enhance your appearance and make you look more youthful. However, badly done veneers can be devastating.

If you missed part 1 of this series, click here to read the first two major mistakes made by dentists when they do veneers with a lack of expertise. Read on to learn more common mistakes and how to avoid them.

3. The third common mistake is failure to use a good esthetic ceramicist. In this case, the overall skill of the dentist may be quite good, but the final outcome will look dull or fake. Make sure your dentist in Colorado Springs has a good relationship with a trusted ceramicist. The wrong materials used in making your veneers could make your veneers susceptible to irreversible staining, or even a problem with the way light reflects off your teeth. You do not want people to say, “Why did you get veneers?” or even, “What nice veneers you have!” When you pay upwards of $1,000 per porcelain veneer, people better be telling you that you have beautiful teeth! The right ceramicist will make all the difference.

4. A fourth mistake is doing the wrong number of veneers. Many patients visit their cosmetic dentist in Colorado Springs and say they want to get veneers on 6 upper teeth (the ones that show when you smile for a picture). The problem here is that most individuals actually show the top 8 - 10 teeth when they smile. When 6 teeth are done instead of 8 or 10, the smile can look imbalanced or it can be obvious that the front 6 don’t match the rest of the teeth in the mouth. People will notice this during a casual conversation with you. Even if you have an unusually small mouth opening, you will probably show 8 teeth when you smile. If your dentist lets you get away with having 6 teeth done, this could be a red flag that you should look for another dentist. On the other hand, if your dentist tries to convince you to get 8 or 10 teeth done instead of 6, please understand that he is not just trying to make more money. He is genuinely trying to offer you a more desirable result.

Come back next week to read part 3 of this series.

How To Avoid Getting Bad Porcelain Veneers

Getting porcelain veneers can be fun or traumatic, depending on whether the final outcome is beautiful or badly flawed. Learn the 10 most common mistakes when getting porcelain veneers, and how to avoid them.

While going to the dentist is often seen as one of the least enjoyable things one could do with their day, getting porcelain veneers in Colorado Springs can be an incredibly fun experience. When you go in for your initial consultation and subsequent procedures, the attention is all on you and your smile throughout the entire appointment. The dentist and his team are 100% focused on what it will take to make your smile look incredible. The results are usually stunning. After getting porcelain veneers, many individuals begin to attract new opportunities and new social connections as their pearlescent smile tends to draw people in. This is one of the reasons why dentists in Colorado Springs love to do porcelain veneers on smile makeover patients.

However, some cosmetic dentists in Colorado Springs are so eager to help their smile makeover patients achieve such life-changing results that they start doing porcelain veneers for paying clients before they have gotten adequate training and experience. The art of placing veneers is not something that can be learned in a weekend continuing education course. It often takes years of post-graduate training and practice to become a master of the art. There are many details, materials, and technologies that must be attended to when placing veneers, but here we describe ten of the most common mistakes. As a patient, you can arm yourself with this knowledge to avoid getting bad veneers -- and having to pay to get them re-done by another dentist.

1. The first thing that must be addressed before the veneers are done is the gum line. The height of the periodontal tissue at the top of each tooth makes a huge difference in the overall appearance of your smile. If too much gum tissue is visible when you smile, this can either make teeth look too small or cause someone to have a characteristic “horse teeth” appearance. It is often referred to as a gummy smile. In addition to the height of the gum line, the symmetry must also be examined. If the gum line is lower in the front teeth than it is in the canines, this can give the appearance of fangs. The majority of patients getting veneers will require some periodontal reshaping done either with a laser or surgical method before getting veneers. Beware if your cosmetic dentist pays no attention to your gum line before proceeding.

2. The second mistake to look out for is failure to do a wax-up or any kind of preliminary procedure to show you what the finished porcelain veneers will look like in your mouth. A wax-up is a 3-D model that is placed over your teeth to give some idea of how the veneers will look, and a wax-up will also help you and your dentist assess whether there will be speech difficulties or other issues with the veneers. You definitely want to know these things before anything permanent is done so that the problem can be fixed before the veneers are even crafted.

Next week, we’ll discuss more common mistakes to avoid when looking for a cosmetic dentist in Colorado Springs for porcelain veneers.