Smile Makeover

Above: Smile Makeovers Before and After Pictures

What is a Smile Makeover?

The benefits of great a looking smile are highly valued and can be achieved for anyone by utilizing the many available dental or cosmetic techniques of today with a smile makeover can make.

Dental treatments can be applied to fix teeth that are missing, damaged, irregular shaped, off colour or unevenly spaced. Techniques can be used by themselves or together to create a mouth of teeth which look healthy and aesthetically pleasing.

Benefits of a Smile Makeover

How a person feels about their smile can have a profound effect on their self-esteem and social behavior. Not being happy with a smile can make one feel self-conscious, wanting to hide their teeth by avoiding to laugh, smile or even talk. This can affect the ability to function well within social and professional environments, perhaps developing a withdrawn demeanor.

Other teeth issues can affect our ability to eat or can lead to further dental or oral issues. Missing teeth for example can result in changes to spacing between other teeth and make them more susceptible to decay.

What Makes a Great Smile?

There is a lot more to a beautiful smile then straight white teeth. A good cosmetic dentist understands the detailed components that make a great smile and how these need to be tailored to an individual’s face and other physical characteristics.

Let us now take a look at the components of a great smile.

• In terms of the length of teeth, longer teeth make for a more youthful appearance. Teeth wear down and shorten as we age.
• A balanced smile has well-proportioned teeth where the two front teeth stand out slightly more than the rest and sets the ideal teeth size for the rest of the mouth
• Missing Teeth are unsightly, can misalign your bite while even affecting the support given to your facial structure.
• Tooth Color is important for a young and healthy looking smile. Teeth whitening is a popular treatment to fix stained or off coloured teeth.  Making teeth as white as possible is not the aim, a proper cosmetic dentist will help you to match the colour of your teeth with the colour of your hair and overall physical makeup for a natural look.
• Damaged teeth can make a smile look old or uncared for. Chipped, cracked, broken or uneven looking teeth can be covered, fixed or replaced.

Cosmetic Dental Procedures

Now that we have a good understanding of the components of a good smile, we will outline the techniques and procedures used to fix issues and create smile makeovers. A cosmetic dentist will work through a dental plan with you to establish the work required to achieve your ideal smile.

Using special software they may be able to give you an idea of how procedures will change your current smile.

• Veneers are a thin durable material that mimics the appearance of teeth. They are placed over the front of teeth so that they replace imperfections, such as damaged teeth, irregular shape, incorrect colour, while strengthening the natural tooth.
• Crowns are natural looking tooth material used to either support a bridge or to cover the top of an existing tooth that may be damaged. They are also used to cap implants, acting as the new tooth.
• Implants involve more invasive work then other dental procedures. They are used to replace missing teeth and involve grafting screws (such as titanium) into the jaw bone. Cemented to the top of this screw is a crown which mimics the look and function of strong, natural looking teeth.
• Bridges are frames that utilize the teeth on either side of missing teeth to support false tooth implants.
• Dentures are basically false teeth on a base and can be used to replace a full set of teeth or used in conjunction with existing teeth to replacing missing teeth. They need to be removed and kept moist when not in use (e.g. at night when sleeping).
• Tooth Whitening: A good cosmetic dentist will not just aim at making your teeth as white as possible. The colour of your teeth will be appropriately matched according to your features, hair colour and age for a truly natural and healthy fit.
• Dental Gum Lift: A special laser is used to cut and seal the gum simultaneously as it moves across, exposing more of the teeth below this excess gum. Not only does this minimize the appearance of the gum when smiling, but it lengthens the appearance of the now more exposed teeth.
• Composite bonding as the name suggests, is when composite material is bonded to the front of teeth to fill gaps, cracks and cover up cosmetic imperfections. They are not as strong or resistant to staining as porcelain veneers, but less expensive.
• Braces realign a misaligned bite; they not only have a significant effect on aesthetics of the smile but the functioning of the mouth and teeth.

How much does a Smile Makeover Cost?

The cost of a smile makeover can vary just as much as the combination of techniques carried out. Dental work is not cheap so when a person opts for a full mouth overhaul or complete smile makeover (just some of the terms used to describe multiple dental treatments), it is worth the dentist combining the costs in a packaged price.

Smile make overs could be categorized, for example, a minor smile makeover may cost around $10000 where as the price for full upper and lower titanium teeth replacement could cost upward of $40,000.