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Regardless of how vigilant you are with your at-home oral care and visiting your dentist for checkups and professional cleanings, mishaps and aging can damage your teeth.
That’s why the experts at Central Avenue Dental offer a wide range of versatile treatments. Among the most popular are crowns and veneers.
With offices in Valley Stream, New York, and the Tribeca and Midtown areas of Manhattan in New York City, our board-certified dentists have perfected countless smiles with effective, natural-looking treatments.
In this blog, the Central Avenue Dental team breaks down when to consider crowns or veneers.
To better understand how crowns and veneers affect oral health, let’s first address the differences between restorative and cosmetic dentistry.
Restorative dentistry focuses on restoring or replacing teeth. Procedures like filling a cavity, root canals, treatment options that strengthen teeth like crowns, and treatments that replace missing teeth, such as dental bridges and implants, fall into this category.
The goal of cosmetic dentistry is to enhance the appearance or aesthetics of your smile. Teeth whitening is one of the most popular procedures in this category. Other cosmetic dentistry procedures include tooth bonding and veneers.
Crowns, also known as caps, are a versatile treatment option with two main functions. In the case of a particularly deep cavity, a crown shores up or strengthens the tooth. Crowns also play an important role with bridges and implants to replace missing teeth.
Your dentist installs a crown in one or two appointments. They first prepare the tooth for the crown by slightly reducing the size of the tooth so the crown fits over it comfortably without interfering with your natural bite.
Then, your dentist makes an impression or mold to ensure a proper fit. Next, they do a color match so your crown blends in with the surrounding teeth.
They send this information to a dental lab that fabricates your custom crown. When the crown returns from the lab, your dentist adheres the restoration in place.
Custom-made veneers are thin pieces of composite resin or porcelain that your dentist adheres to the front surfaces of teeth to cover imperfections.
As the ultimate cover-up, veneers can address issues like worn, broken, chipped, misshapen, or unevenly spaced teeth, replacing these cosmetic flaws with a new, attractive, aesthetically pleasing smile in two appointments.
Similar to the prep for crowns, at your first appointment, your dentist shaves about 1 millimeter of enamel from the tooth or teeth getting veneers.
As in the case of crowns, your provider then takes a series of impressions and color matches and gets the data to a dental laboratory that creates your veneers.
You return in about 2-3 weeks when your veneers come back from the lab. In an appointment that typically lasts under two hours, your dentist places the veneers on the front of the teeth being treated and bonds them in place.
You leave with the smile you’ve always wanted, and it looks so natural that you may even forget it’s not the smile you were born with.
At Central Avenue Dental, your comfort is always job one. Whether you’re getting crowns, veneers, or another service, you can relax in our comfortable treatment chairs. We also offer options like nitrous oxide or oral sedation to decrease any oral sensitivity you may experience.
If you have damaged teeth and think your smile can use a do-over, contact us for a consultation to learn if crowns or veneers are right for you. Call the office near you or use the online tool to book a visit.
