Dental Veneers

When a veneer is the right answer, and when it is not

If your teeth are the right shape and position but the wrong colour, whitening is cheaper, faster and takes nothing away from the tooth. Try that first.

If a tooth is crooked but otherwise healthy, clear aligners move it into place without touching the enamel. Veneers can mask mild crowding, but using them to straighten teeth means removing sound tooth structure to do a job that orthodontics does better.

Veneers earn their place where the problem is the tooth itself: a chip that keeps catching your lip, enamel worn down at the edges, a tooth that has stayed grey after a root canal, or a gap between the front teeth that you would rather close than shift. We will walk through the alternatives at the consultation, including the ones that cost us less than a veneer does.

How we design them

We scan your teeth with the 3Shape scanner and design the new shape digitally, so you can see the proposed result against your own teeth before any preparation happens. This matters more for front teeth than anywhere else in the mouth, because a millimetre of length or a slight change in the edge line is the difference between a smile that looks like yours and one that does not.

Preparation removes a small amount of enamel from the front of the tooth so the veneer sits flush rather than proud, and you wear temporaries while the porcelain is made. Veneers are tried in before they are bonded, so the shade can be checked while it is still possible to change it. The work is spread over a few weeks rather than done in a day.

Living with them

Porcelain does not stain the way enamel does, so coffee and red wine are less of a problem afterwards than before. It does chip, though, under the same conditions natural teeth chip: biting fingernails, opening packaging with your teeth, grinding at night.

If you grind your teeth, a nightguard belongs in the plan from the beginning rather than after the first chip. It is the single thing that most affects how long a set of veneers survives, and it is worth raising at the consultation rather than waiting to be asked.

Well-cared-for veneers last ten to fifteen years. They are replaced rather than repaired when they eventually fail, which is worth factoring into the decision.

Common Questions

Do veneers ruin your teeth?

They require permanently removing a thin layer of enamel, so the tooth will always need a veneer or crown afterwards. That is the trade-off. It is not damage, but it is not reversible either, which is why we push back when whitening or aligners would achieve what you want.

How many appointments will it take?

The usual sequence is a consultation with scanning and design, a preparation appointment with temporaries fitted, and a fitting appointment once the porcelain comes back from the lab, generally a few weeks later.

Will they look obviously fake?

That depends entirely on how they are designed. Porcelain that is too uniform in colour and too even in shape is what reads as artificial. We design in slight variation because real teeth have it.

Does insurance cover veneers?

Usually not, because most plans class them as cosmetic. Where a veneer is restoring a genuinely damaged tooth, there is sometimes a case to be made, and we will make it if it applies to you.