What is a Smile Makeover?

Your teeth and gums work together multiple times a day to produce a smile. However, if you don’t like the way either of those components appears, you may feel less willing to smile. A smile makeover combines cosmetic dental services to give you a better smile and help boost your confidence. Is this type of dental service right for you?

What Is a Smile Makeover

Cosmetic dentistry is an area of dental care that treats healthy teeth to improve how they look. Some common services in this field include:

• Dental bonding or veneers to fix individual problem teeth
• Invisalign to straighten misaligned bites
• Dental whitening to lighten yellowed or darkened teeth

When you choose a smile makeover, your dentist will examine your teeth and gums for health and appearance. If you have a healthy smile, you can work with your dentist to select the suitable cosmetic dental options for your smile makeover.

What Can a Smile Makeover Fix?

Smile makeovers change your smile’s overall color, balance, alignment, and shape. The dentist expertly applies the various services they offer to achieve this without sacrificing the health of your teeth. If you have one or more of the following problems, you need to ask your dentist about a smile makeover.

Misshapen Teeth

Not everyone has teeth that create a perfect line when they smile. Some teeth may have chips, large gaps between them, or be too short compared to their neighbors.

Dentists use porcelain veneers or bonding to correct cosmetic concerns on individual teeth instead of treating all the teeth to fix issues with one or two problems. Veneers or bonding can repair these problems to ensure that all your teeth have a uniform appearance.

Porcelain veneers are thin sheets of porcelain a lab creates specifically for your teeth. The dentist bonds the veneers to the prepared surfaces of your teeth. Veneers provide lasting correction of cosmetic problems by making your teeth appear longer, fuller, or no longer chipped.

Dental bonding is similar to veneers in what it does. Like veneers, bonding can restore the full shape of chipped teeth. However, this option is a material your dentist sculpts to fit your tooth and hide the imperfections. It doesn’t last as long, but you get results the same day instead of waiting for a lab to create veneers.

Darkened or Discolored Teeth

One of the most common concerns for many people is the color of their teeth. However, teeth naturally darken with age, and drinks such as coffee and tea stain the teeth.

Your dentist can add professional teeth whitening to your smile makeover to lighten your teeth safely to the shade you want. Options include in-office whitening if your teeth have severe discoloration that you want to have corrected quickly and take-home kits for convenient, on-the-go whitening. Both options are safer and more effective than whitening toothpaste or kits you find at grocery stores.

If you have individual teeth with severe discoloration, often caused by internal decay, the dentist may recommend treating the decay first. Once the doctor restores the teeth, they fix the dark color with veneers or bonding.

For this color-correcting application, your dentist may suggest placing porcelain veneers or dental bonding over the discolored teeth. Veneers never stain because the porcelain used to create them does not absorb stains. However, dental bonding may stain, making regular dental care and staying away from staining foods and drinks more critical.

Misaligned Teeth

Crooked or poorly spaced teeth and misaligned bites negatively impact your appearance and even your face shape.

Moreover, these problems can also impact your dental health. For instance, overcrowded teeth raise the risk of cavities between them because you may not be able to floss easily between them. Additionally, a crossbite can interfere with proper chewing.

The Invisalign system is an orthodontic solution that provides you with a way to straighten your teeth and correct your bite without years of wearing metal braces.

Instead of having brackets and wires installed in your mouth, you wear smooth, custom-made Invisalign aligner trays 22 hours a day. When you need to eat, drink, or care for your teeth, you remove the tray. Over the course of the treatment, typically between nine and 15 months, your teeth slowly move into their correct positions.

By correcting the bite alignment, your dentist straightens your teeth and can improve your whole face’s appearance.

Why You Should Consider a Smile Makeover

What can a smile makeover do for you? The answer is more than you might think. A better-looking smile can help you to feel more confident and change how others see you.

Feel More Satisfaction in Your Smile

Did you know that how you feel about your smile can affect your overall psychological and social well-being? In a study of 426 students, researchers showed a correlation between dissatisfaction with one’s smile and wanting to hide their teeth when smiling. Instead of hiding your teeth from embarrassment, seek ways to fix your smile. A smile makeover can boost your confidence by giving you a smile you will feel satisfied with and willing to show off to the world.

Make Better First Impressions on Others

Another benefit of having a great smile goes beyond how you feel about yourself to how others perceive you. In a survey, 29% of adults reported the teeth as the first aspect of the face they notice. Almost as many, 24%, noted that a smile was the part of the face most recall after the meeting. Additionally, 73% of Americans felt they could trust someone with a great smile compared to someone with an enviable car or a high-paying job.

Improving the appearance of your teeth can change how others see you. If you’re looking to make great impressions with your coworkers, find a new job, or impress your friends, a smile makeover could help.

Do You Want a Better Smile? Start Now By Contacting Langley Dental Care

If you want to improve your smile, your first step is connecting with us at Langley Dental Care. We offer a full suite of cosmetic dental services with our standard preventative and restorative care. With help from Dr. Langley and our team, you can get a smile that you can finally feel confident to show off.