With advancing technology, we have more and more options for giving you the straight smile you desire. The only problem is that the new expansion of options can make it harder to decide which is the right path to your straighter smile.
Porcelain veneers are a great approach to straightening your teeth, but they’re not always appropriate. Orthodontics, despite their limitations often remain the best way to get your straight smile.
How Porcelain Veneers Straighten Teeth
Porcelain veneers straighten your smile not by moving your teeth but reshaping them. Some of your enamel is removed and replaced with an advanced dental ceramic that looks and performs like regular tooth enamel.
By reshaping your teeth, rotated, crooked, or gapped teeth can become a straight, even smile.
Orthodontic Options
Orthodontics straightens your teeth by moving them. Exerting pressure on teeth causes your bone to reshape around them, allowing teeth to move into place. With technological advances, we have several ways we can apply the necessary pressure.
Invisalign, sometimes called “clear braces” uses clear plastic aligners to apply this pressure. Traditional orthodontics uses metal wires and brackets.
Advantages of Porcelain Veneers
The best advantage of porcelain veneers is their speed. It takes less than a month to give you your new straight smile with porcelain veneers, whereas orthodontics can take a year or more.
Porcelain veneers can also be targeted to correct just one or two problem teeth rather than disturb the rest of your smile. A gap in your smile or a single rotated tooth can be dealt with on their own.
And if you have other problems with your smile, such as a peg lateral or deeply discolored teeth, these can be corrected at the same time as a crooked smile.
Straightening your teeth with porcelain veneers also means you won’t have to wear a retainer. Because your tooth roots haven’t been moved, they aren’t likely to drift back.
Advantages of Orthodontics
Orthodontics is the best solution if you have problems not just with the appearance of your smile, but also with the way your bite fits together. Orthodontics can also help if your bite is such that it may damage porcelain veneers.
You can get a warning sign of this by looking at the condition of your front teeth. If they’re worn, chipped, or cracked, you may not be an ideal candidate for porcelain veneers, although sometimes TMJ treatment can help.
You Don’t Always Have to Choose
Sometimes, the two treatments can be used in a complementary way to give you the best results.We can design an attractive smile using a combination of procedures customized to your goals.
To talk to a cosmetic dentist about your straightening options, please contact Smile Columbia Dentistry in Columbia, SC today.
