Are you considering a smile makeover with veneers? Veneers are a great choice, because they can dramatically transform your smile. Your teeth can be whiter, brighter, straighter, and taller, all with just one procedure. Basically one month to your new smile.
But if you want to get the best results from your smile makeover, you need to make an important decision: how many veneers should you get to transform your smile? Here are some questions to consider so you can find the right number of veneers.
What Effect Are You Trying to Achieve?
Most importantly, you have to consider the goal of your smile makeover. If you’re trying to address a discolored tooth, a gap between teeth, or a few tooth chips, then you will need fewer veneers. If you’re happy with the appearance of your teeth generally, these veneers can be matched to your natural teeth to give your smile a uniform, attractive appearance.
But if you’re trying to brighten a discolored smile, trying to create a more youthful smile, lengthening your teeth, or otherwise changing the appearance of your entire smile, you will need more veneers.
How Many Teeth Do You Show?
Next, we’ll want to look at how many teeth show when you smile. We’ll take pictures of you smiling different smiles to answer this question.
The odds are that you show more teeth than you think. Although we tend to focus on the six largest teeth in our smile–the four incisors and the canines in the upper arch–most of us show more than that when we smile. We need to figure out how many other teeth will show. Do you show your lower teeth when you smile? How many teeth can be seen back into the sides of your mouth?
If you’re going to be changing the size, shape, or color of these central teeth, you might need to change some of the others, too. Otherwise, these central teeth won’t match. Not only will these central teeth look fake, but the entire effect of your smile will be thrown off.
Minimizing the Number of Veneers
We understand that you might find it harder to afford a smile makeover with dozens of veneers. You might need to try to reduce the number of veneers required. There are some strategies to try that can help.
First, get teeth whitening before veneers. The whiter your natural teeth are, the easier it will be to match the veneers to them while achieving the appearance you want.
Second, consider less dramatic transformations. The more dramatic the change you’re making, the greater the disparity between veneers and your natural teeth. This makes it hard to match the veneers to your teeth, which means you’ll need more veneers to make your smile look attractive.
Finally, we can consider staging your veneers. We might initially try your smile makeover with fewer veneers and see how you feel about the results. Then we can plan to increase the number of veneers as necessary to improve the results.
Invest in a Smile You’ll Be Happy with
In the end, there’s no point to getting a smile makeover if you’re not going to be happy with the results. Trying to save money by getting a bad result makes no sense. We will work with you to help you figure out the right number of veneers for you to get a beautiful smile that you’ll be happy with.
To start your smile makeover, talk to an Orange County cosmetic dentist at Harriman Family Dental. Please call (845) 783-6466 today for an appointment.
