Composite Veneers

Generally, you should consider placing composite veneers on the teeth you want visible in your smile. The number of teeth visible is different for every person and depends a lot on the broadness of your upper jaw.

Placing veneers on only the front six teeth will often lead to a narrow looking smile where the front six teeth appear to sit forward while the others behind them tend to disappear a little in the smile.

The current trend is to consider veneering the front eight teeth and sometimes even the front ten. This will lead to a broader looking smile.

Most composite veneers will last from 6 to 8 years. However, they can last considerably less than this if trauma or decay is involved.

The composite resin itself is quite strong and stable, but the tooth structure it is attached to, and the gum and bone structures that attach to it are alive. As such they can become diseased or damaged – the reason for early failure is not commonly because of composite resin failure.

Composite veneers are cheaper and quicker to place than porcelain veneers. However, they cannot compare in two key ways:

• Natural beauty.

  Composite resin materials and techniques have improved immensely in recent times but they cannot yet match highly polished and glazed porcelain for beauty. Added to this is the fact that more control of the final result can be obtained when working on veneer on a plaster model on a benchtop, compared with placing and curing resin directly on to a tooth surface.

• Longevity.

  The surface of resin can only be highly polished and will wear with time. It will therefore take on a more matt appearance after a year or two (depending on your dietary and maintenance habits). The material will also become more porous with time and therefore will tend to stain. Porcelain on the other hand is glazed and will never change colour and is extremely resistant to wear.

  Finally, the resin material is not as strong as porcelain.

Composite veneers typically have very minimal or no tooth structure removed before they are placed. Resin fillings that are currently in place in the tooth are removed and incorporated into the veneer restoration as you cannot readily or reliably bond newer resin to older resin.

Composite veneers will tend to stain – the rate which this will happen will depend upon your dietary and hygiene habits. Initialy this will be able to be polished off by us, but an increase in porosity over time of all resins means the stain will penetrate the material over time.

If correctly planned and executed the risks are actually very minimal.

Some people have excessively heavy bites, particularly related to grinding while asleep. Composite veneers may be more prone to fracture under these circumstances, However, we can protect against this by providing you a guard to wear while asleep. Porcelain crowns may be a better option in such circumstances.

Most people don’t show the lower teeth as much as they do the upper teeth. Therefore, most composite veneers are placed on the upper teeth.

If you do show your lower teeth in your smile, the option to place composite veneers here can be discussed – particularly if they are also crooked. However, most people will simply whiten their lower teeth to match the uppers.

We often encourage teeth whitening to be done before the veneers are placed, so we can match to an actual final whitening result. The simultaneous whitening of the upper teeth would provide colour lightening here and allow for thinner, more conservative veneers to be placed.

Pain should be minimal after composite veneer treatment.

The preparation and bonding process requires strict control over the surrounding gum tissue. They are lightly pushed out of the way during the procedure, and some people can have mild discomfort in this area for a day or two after treatment.

Rarely, the bite can be left a little too heavy on a tooth after bonding leading to slight tenderness in that tooth. Again, this will be easily and quickly resolved with a quick bite adjustment as required.

Some claim that one advantage of resin veneers over porcelain is that if they do actually fracture, they can be readily added to with more resin. This is actually the case within the first seven weeks of placement only. After seven weeks, composite resin becomes fairly inert and as such is difficult to add to repair. Both porcelain and resin can be repaired using various materials and techniques, but these have unpredictably variable success rates.