What Is Cosmetic Dentistry?

Are you looking for a simple and affordable way to improve the appearance of your smile? Here, our team at BAF dentistry will walk you through how cosmetic dental care can help.

It is fair to say that most people do not like going to their biannual dental appointments for check-ups.  However, with modern diets that have less sugar, the use of electric toothbrushes, and an overall improvement in dental hygiene, fewer people need routine dental work like fillings and crowns less often. This has led to more dental patients looking for ways to change the appearance of their teeth, which, in turn, has caused more people to seek out cosmetic dental care. 

Cosmetic dental care, despite its name, can offer patients more than a simply better-looking smile. It can offer an overall healthier smile, as well as one that improves confidence. 

Here, our team at Biltmore Avenue Family Dentistry will walk you through some of the options for cosmetic dental care that we can offer, as well as explain how they can improve the appearance of your smile. Enjoy!

Who Can Benefit From Cosmetic Dentistry?

So, to start with, what is cosmetic dentistry? Would you be suitable for it?

As mentioned before, cosmetic dentistry is aimed at improving the appearance of your teeth and your smile. It is more commonly offered in dental surgeries today, including ours at BafDentistry. Of course, to be able to undertake cosmetic dental work, you need to have good oral health as standard, and you need to talk to our team about suitability. As a quick example, you could want to have dental or oral implants fitted. To be suitable for this procedure, you would need to have no history of osteoporosis and cannot have active gum disease. 

Now, who can benefit from cosmetic dental procedures? You could, if you want to improve your smile. There are lots of options to improve the look of your teeth, and our team will listen to what you want from the treatment. Our cosmetic dentist will recommend a suitable course of action for you.

Types of Cosmetic Dental Care

Do you want to whiten and brighten your smile? Or are you eager to cover some cracks in your teeth following braces as an adult?

Either way, we’ve got you covered and here, we will look at the options that our dental laboratory can offer you.

Dental Implants

These were mentioned earlier and are among the most popular options that we offer. Oral or dental implants are ideal for anyone who has lost one or more of their adult teeth. Rather than having the tooth replaced with a bridge or a set of partial dentures, we can fit an oral implant. In simple terms, it is like a titanium screw which is attached to the jaw via surgery. We would then need to wait for between three and six months for the implant to fuse to the bone. After this time, we would fit a false tooth, or set of teeth, to the implant., which would match the natural tooth you lost in color and shape. Voila! You would have a set of teeth that you could use to bite into food without needing to apply adhesive.

Dental Whitening

Next on the list is teeth whitening, which is ideal if you have discolored teeth or if you simply want to have brighter teeth.

The process of whitening your teeth with our dentist will involve placing a rubber dam over your gum line to protect it from the gel that we apply. Then, we gradually coat your teeth with a hydrogen peroxide gel, which causes your teeth to oxidise, thereby removing any surface stains that may be caused by smoking, drinking tea or eating foods that are high in tannins. 

We can whiten your teeth up to 18 shades using this process, but we have found that patients who opt for dental whitening tend to prefer the more ‘natural’ appearance in their smiles, so the Hollywood gleam is not as common as you may think!

Dental Bonding 

A lot of people have teeth that are thin, or may have teeth that have a lot of chips cracks, or they may have a damaged tooth due to an injury. In this case, we can offer bonding the front of the teeth, which is, known as dental bonding. 

Dental bonding offers a number of benefits. For one thing, it can be used to correct misaligned teeth, that may be too minor to correct with aligners or braces. Next, the procedure is less invasive than others, and involves building up the surface of the tooth to create a symmetrical, smooth look. The composite material that we use to build your dental bonds will be tooth colored, so the tooth won’t stand out! 

Dental Veneers

Next, we have dental veneers, which are also known as porcelain veneers. These are small shells that are placed over the front surface of a tooth to correct any issues with coloring, to cover any cracks or chips, and to cover minor spaces, allowing for a better alignment. How do they differ from bonding? Well, our team would need to remove some of the front of the tooth to place the veneers, and, on average, veneers last longer than bonding. 

Inlays and Onlays 

Inlays and onlays combine restorative dentistry with cosmetic options. An inlay is placed in a hold or cavity in your tooth, whereas an onlay is placed in a larger cavity in a tooth and can sometimes be used to build up a tooth that has been damaged due to decay or injury. Sometimes, a tooth can be repaired using both but we aim to blend the line at our surgery between restoration and art.

They are used when there are not enough teeth left over after decay to place a filling, but there are enough teeth left over to not need a full dental crown. Of course, we will aim to match the inlays or only to the surrounding tooth color to ensure that they fit seamlessly into the tooth, which we will usually achieve by using composite or porcelain. 

If you would like to know more about any of these options, please contact our team at Biltmore Avenue Family Dentistry today!