Are your teeth worn or chipped or disfigured that you’re no longer happy with the way your smile works? In today’s focus on dentistry, let’s talk about how porcelain veneers can be used to improve all of that and give you the smile you’ve always wanted.

Hi, I’m Dr. Paul Henny, and let’s spend a few minutes talking about the topic of porcelain veneers. Most people have heard that term before, some people know a little bit about it, but really as I discuss the topic with a lot of individuals they know very little about it.

A lot of people have seen bad examples of aesthetic or cosmetic dentistry and it turns out that’s the reason why they stay away from porcelain veneers or even caps or crowns on their teeth. They have friends that their smile looks, really pretty bad, and so even though their personal smile isn’t what they’d hoped, it could be that they’re afraid to do something because they’re afraid that it might actually be made worse if a dentist were to work on it, and to do something to their smile that perhaps looks like what their friend’s looks like.

In truth, aesthetic and cosmetic dentistry have advanced to the point where the bet and finest dentistry is undetectable whether it’s man-made or not. In fact I would challenge you to look at the cases that I do, and that other really experienced cosmetic dentists do, you can’t even see crowns or veneers. You just know that this person has a beautiful smile and that’s all you know.

In fact a lot of patients that I’ve treated over the years will say to me, ‘none of my friends know that I had my teeth done, they just ask me why do I look so much better, what have I done, have I lost weight, have I changed my hair color, and I sometimes don’t even tell them what I did’.

This is kind of common. So that’s sort of the standard that fine aesthetic or cosmetic dentistry is at right now. It’s at the point where it’s undetectable in the sense that it looks completely natural, and it looks fabulous.

One of the most common tools or techniques that we use in this area are porcelain veneers, and porcelain veneers are really a very thin layer of porcelain, almost about as thick as your thumbnail, that can be put on the outside of your teeth, and can be used to change the color, influence the size, the width, the length, and the appearance of your teeth.

Typically we would do this on several teeth so in an instance where maybe an individual’s teeth were worn short over the years or discolored, we can use porcelain veneers to actually overlay on top of their existing teeth structure that has been lost or even structure that would make things look better. So the best porcelain veneers are absolutely fabulous.

Another question that I get is, ‘well do they really work, don’t they pop off, are they strong?’ In the beginning, I wondered about that myself. I’ve been working in porcelain veneers for about fifteen years or so now, and the cases that I did fifteen years ago look just as good today as they did then. And so I can tell you right now when these types of procedures are done properly by a very skilled dentist and the proper materials are used, they are very lifelong, they last a long time, assuming that they’re taken care of. My patients are very happy about them. I’ll show you a few photographs of some of the cases I’ve done here on this website.

If you’re interested in talking to me about porcelain veneers or really any other aspect of cosmetic dentistry, I’d be happy to do that, I do that all the time, you can call me at (540) 774-1577.

Hope to hear from you.”