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.