What is the procedure for getting Dental Veneers
The first step for getting your dental veneers, it being porcelain veneers or composite veneers, is to make a diagnosis and a treatment planning. The dentist will assess if the option of dental veneers is suitable for the patient. This may require doing mock ups of the veneers, otherwise known as Trial Smile or Wax Up. In Trial Smile, a model of your teeth is made in a dental lab and then the proposed design for your veneers are build up on that model. This allows you to see how your new teeth will look like once your dental veneers are fitted. This is done for both porcelain veneers or composite veneers.
Modern porcelain veneers are very strong and durable. The veneers are made according to the unique needs of the patient. E-max veneers or Lumineers are ideal for cases that require very little or no drilling of teeth.
After the trial smile or wax-up procedure, if you are happy with what is proposed, either the veneers are directly placed on your teeth, as in the case of composite bondings. In the case of porcelain veneers, if needed, first any minor modification suggested is made to your teeth and then impressions of your teeth are taken and sent to the lab. From this impression, porcelain veneers are made in the lab and polished. Veneers are then tried on your teeth at the clinic and if happy with the shape a, design and colour, then they are fitted on.
Where it is possible or necessary, a copy of the veneers, based on the trial smile, known as provisional veneers, can be placed on your teeth while waiting for the porcelain veneers to be made at the lab. This allows you to get a feel of what is come with your final veneers and if a patient would like to make any minor changes to the design of the veneers, it would be possible to do at this stage, while having their provisional veneers on their teeth and before the porcelain veneers are made at the lab.
On the other hand, composite veneers or bondings require less appointments than for porcelain veneers and the final result can be achieved in a single visit. After assessments, planning and the trial smile, composite veneers are directly build up on your teeth. The composite bondings are directly cemented on to your teeth, shaped, contoured, smoothed and finally polished, all in one visit.