If you’re like many people, there are some ways in which you’re unhappy with the alignment of your smile, but you aren’t necessarily interested in wearing braces for a year or so to fix them. Invisalign aligners can be great for people like this, but even they take around 12 months to see results.
What if you could completely straighten your smile within as little as two appointments? With veneers, that can be done! If you’re wondering how it works, here’s some information you may find interesting.
What Are Veneers, Anyway?
If you’re new to the concept, veneers are thin white shells that can be placed on top of the teeth to change their apparent shape, size, color, or alignment. They’re typically made out of porcelain, which makes them both beautiful and durable.
How Can Veneers Straighten My Teeth?
People who have a crooked smile tend to think that there’s a problem with the positioning of their teeth—namely, that they’re too close together. To some extent this is true, and braces work by taking your teeth and moving them into the correct position.
However, it isn’t the whole story. Looking at it another way, misalignment is just as much a problem with the shape of your teeth as it is with where they are. If you can reshape your teeth, you can make room for them to coexist together without clashing. (This is presuming that you don’t have any bite issues, but that’ll be touched on later.)
Veneers allow your dentist to change the shape of your teeth, removing a small sliver of your enamel and covering it with these shards of porcelain. In that way, they can also be used to bring your smile into alignment, in addition to their other cosmetic benefits.
What Can’t Veneers Do?
As you may have gathered, veneers can’t do all that much about bite problems. If your teeth don’t meet evenly, such as in the case of overbites or underbites, changing their shape won’t really help. However, the fact that veneers can straighten out your smile within just two appointments still makes them desirable for dealing with mild to moderate alignment issues.
About the Author
Dr. Michael Rose understands that great dental care isn’t a one-way street—he works hard to develop a strong dialogue between himself and his patients. He considers oral health care to be a partnership based on integrity, trust, and mutual respect. Dr. Rose received his degree from the University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, and since then he has continued his education by completing the curriculum from the Misch Implant Institute and the Kois Center.
If you have any questions about veneers, we can be reached at our website or by phone at (702) 459-8998.