Porcelain veneers can work magic on your smile, but it’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons before making your decision.
With cosmetic dentistry growing more popular, unattractive smiles are more often becoming a thing of the past. Teeth whitening can remove more than a decade of discoloration and yellowing. Braces and clear aligners create straight smiles and healthy bites that can last a lifetime. And dental veneers can fix seemingly any minor or moderate dental aesthetic issues, from teeth stains and crookedness to cracks and chips in enamel.
What are dental veneers? Veneers are thin porcelain shells that are placed over your teeth to change their entire appearance. They were invented in 1928 to change actors’ smiles for movie roles. They’ve since moved out of the backlot dressing room and are now an affordable way for patients to get a “smile makeover.” However, while veneers are often seen as a “cure-all” for flaws in a tooth’s appearance, they’re not perfect for everyone.
Like all treatments, they have their advantages and drawbacks, which you must consider before choosing to get them. What are the pros and cons of veneers?
The Pros
With a talented and experienced cosmetic dentist, patients’ veneers can not only create a handsome grin, but they can give themselves a new lease on life. Here are just a few of veneers’ incredible benefits:
More Attractive Smile
Who doesn’t love a beautiful smile? With veneers, you can get an entire smile makeover in just two visits to our dental office. Our talented dental professionals can help you pinpoint and fix a wide variety of problems you have with your not-so-pearly whites. Porcelain veneers are crafted to look entirely natural, even as they take care of several aesthetic issues simultaneously, including:
Teeth stains, yellowing, discoloration
Chips and cracks
Minor crookedness
Gaps between teeth
Surface-level lumps and craters in teeth
Teeth that are uneven or too short
Wear and tear
Dental veneers are designed with your specific smile in mind. A cosmetic dentist takes everything into account, including face shape. Do veneers change your face? For older patients, veneers are sometimes considered a non-surgical facelift because they can preserve your bite’s fit and maintain the face’s symmetry. For this reason, patients with porcelain veneers are often mistaken for being younger than they are.
Handsome, natural-looking smiles also make for healthier self-esteem. Veneers can finally give you the confidence to show off their pearly whites without fear or embarrassment, which can be life-changing for some patients. Smiling more can help patients become more outgoing, build better and stronger friendships, and even make them overall happier.
Lasting Results
Veneers are one of the most durable and longest-lasting cosmetic procedures. Porcelain can take more pressure than composite resin without chipping or breaking. It’s also highly resistant to staining, even if you do nothing but have coffee, red wine, curries, and tomato soup every day. (Even if you won’t see their mark on your teeth, we still don’t recommend that you do this.)
How long do porcelain veneers last? Most patients can expect their veneers to appear fresh and pearly white for an average of 10 to 15 years. With great care and excellent dental hygiene, they can last more than 20 years. In comparison, composite tooth bonding has a lifespan of about half that. And even professional teeth whitening, which uses the strongest dental bleach, doesn’t last more than two or three years.
Low Maintenance
Some cosmetic procedures require you to adjust your diet or dental hygiene routine to accommodate them. For example, you’ll want to be careful around big stainers like coffee and black tea after a professional whitening. And bracket braces require you to weave dental floss beneath the wires. In contrast, porcelain veneers are easy to take care of because you can treat them the same as you would your natural teeth.
To get the most out of your porcelain tooth facades, you should do more than make sure to brush your teeth twice a day and floss daily. Proper oral hygiene routines include watching the foods you eat and attending teeth cleaning appointments every six months. Your hygienist may recommend coming into the office every three or four months if you have a history of frequent or severe dental problems.
Fewer Headaches and Dental Pain
When a person’s bite is uneven or doesn’t meet quite like it should, it can be a literal pain in the neck. By correcting and leveling out a person’s smile, porcelain veneers can often stop recurring headaches and jaw pain. In some cases, it can even be an effective treatment for TMJ.
TMJ occurs when the joint connecting the upper and lower jaws becomes damaged or falls out of alignment. The jaw and muscles become strained and sore, and at its worst, patients may have difficulty opening or closing their mouths. By treating TMJ with veneers, you can also say goodbye to these symptoms:
Face, neck, and jaw pain
Chronic headaches and earaches
Face and jaw swelling
Clicking and popping when opening your mouth
Trouble chewing correctly or without pain
Jaw locking shut
The Cons
Like any other dental procedure, porcelain veneers have some minor drawbacks that you should first consider before getting them.
Preparation Process
Before our dentists can place your veneers, we will need to prepare the tooth beforehand. A thin layer of the enamel—about 0.5mm—is removed to ensure they fit without any issue or added bulkiness. Shaving the tooth also provides a rougher surface that’s easier to bond to securely. This tooth preparation process is irreversible as the enamel can’t grow back on its own.
Some patients, especially those with dental anxiety, may be nervous about such a permanent change. But do veneers ruin your teeth? Not at all. Our dentists always ensure you have a sufficient amount of enamel and never breach past the surface layer. The inner structure below is left entirely untouched. The smile’s health is still perfectly preserved. However, you may experience some mild sensitivity to hot and cold foods.
Our dental office also offers a type of thinner, “no-prep” veneers as an alternative for patients who are still wary of having their enamel filed down. However, since they are often made of composite resin rather than sturdy porcelain, they will need to be replaced sooner. No-prep veneers last between five and ten years.
Limitations
While veneers are very flexible and can tackle several problems at once, they are limited in how much they can fix. These porcelain facades only change the tooth’s surface and can only correct minor to moderate dental flaws. Anything that goes deeper, like cavities and breaks, will need restorative rather than cosmetic work. Veneers are also limited only to the frontmost teeth, with a maximum of six to eight teeth total. If you have problems with back teeth, particularly the molars, you’ll need something more extensive, like dental crowns.
Cost
Porcelain is an altogether better material than composite, and that generally shows itself in veneers’ price. Compared to other aesthetic treatments, like composite bonding, dental veneers tend to be on the higher end of the price scale. How much do veneers cost? The exact price depends on several factors:
Number of veneers
Type of veneer
Size
Location
Your dental veneers cost also won’t be covered by your dental insurance provider. Insurance plans only include routine or necessary treatments, such as dental cleanings or tooth fillings, not an elective treatment like porcelain veneers. However, our Bellflower dental office wants to ensure our patients can always have dental care within their budget. We also offer alternative options, like in-house financing, CareCredit, and Wells Fargo Health Advantage.
Comparing Dental Bonding vs. Veneers: Are Veneers Worth It?
If you’re on the fence about getting veneers, another alternative like composite bonding can achieve similar results. Bonding changes the enamel’s outer appearance by molding liquid composite resin over the tooth and hardening it with a curing light. How does this difference in materials and methods compare?
Unlike porcelain veneers, there’s no need to file the tooth down to place the bonding because the bonding fits itself to your tooth. While veneers always recreate the entire enamel’s surface, composite bonding can be applied as little or as liberally as our dentists need. However, this minimal change means that bonding can’t handle more moderate crookedness, chips, or misshapenness like veneers.
And while composite bonding is more affordable than porcelain veneers, they’re also less durable. Dental bonding usually lasts no longer than ten years. Overall, this means that porcelain veneers are much more cost-efficient in the long run, making them a worthwhile investment for those interested.
Are you ready to schedule a consultation with our cosmetic dentists in Bellflower? Please call our dental office at (323) 486-6579 today. We can’t wait to help you achieve your dream smile!
