What type of porcelain veneer is ideal for me?

Porcelain Veneers | Composite Veneers | Replacement Veneers  | Before & After | Costs | Procedure

There are many types of porcelain veneer types including:

Feldspathic Veneers

These provide the most aesthetic veneers as they are layered on a platinum foil with a very precise and exacting technique that requires a very experienced ceramist to use this material. The strength of this material is low at about 90MPa, having the lowest strengths of all veneers and thus fragile and thus challenging to use. This material used to be the mainstay of veneers about 10 – 15 years ago.

Empress from Ivoclar Vivodent

These are lucite reinforced pressed ceramics with strengths of about 200 MPa and with decades of clinical success. The marginal adaptation is excellent but these veneers are the least aesthetic as they create a more opaque like appearance and thus an unnatural look. We rarely use this porcelain.

Emax from Ivoclar Vivodent

Emax uses either lithium disilicate ceramic, zirconia and Tetric CAD ( a hybrid ceramic resin ) as the underlying base thus creating the ability to be used not just for veneers but for crowns and bridges. The strengths of these range from 250 MPa to 1200 MPa dependant on the material used.

The Zirconia base is opaque and is thus more indicated for back teeth and bridges, where strength is the prerequisite.

The Tetric Cad is ideal for back teeth allowing flexure.

The Lithium Disilicate ceramic is ideal for veneers as it has a range of ingots to creating the ability to provide patient-specific aesthetics including:

• HT – with High Translucency
• MT – with Medium Translucency
• LT – with Low Translucency

And the Opal range which can be all most see through when pressed thin and ideal for no or minimal predation veneers.

The use the layering ceramic will colour match the smile irrespective of the foundation base used and is thus ideal smile makeover as the aesthetics can be excellent.

Emax has shown about 98% survival rate with over 40 million restorations made over the last decade.

Lava from 3M

There are 2 types of 3M Lava veneers

• 3M Lava Plus Zirconia which has a strength of 1400Mpa
• 3M Lava Esthetic Zirconia which has a strength of 800Mpa
• Both these are colour matched to the Vita classic shade

The strength of 3M Lava Esthetic Zirconia is almost half that of 3M Lava Plus Zirconia but has other advantages including a gradient pre-shaded cubic zirconia offering four shading formulation, inherent fluorescence for all shades enabling highly aesthetic full-contour veneers to be fabricated in a simple mill-sinter-glaze process.

Other less popular manufacturers include cubeX, Katana and Imagine.

However, the brands that we commonly use include Durathin, Ultrathin and Lumineers; with Durathin and Ultrathin using Emax as the foundation for these veneers.

The process starts with a FREE discovery consultation where we discuss your needs and requirements with a Computerised Photographic Assessment to help you understand the possibilities.

We are at this stage able to assist you with potential options available to you. Depending on your requirements we can customise and tailor-make individual treatments plan to suit your needs and budgets.

You can opt for simple procedures to more complex involved treatments plans to produce your beautiful new smile. Our aim is to answer your questions and provide you with the advantages and disadvantages etc.

We can also provide you with a computer-aided smile analysis and a handcrafted Trial Preview, to gives you the opportunity to see your smile before we even touch your teeth. We also use Bite Analysis technology to ensure a long lasting, comfortable and a healthy final result.

We then decide what type of veneer treatment is ideal for you by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each type of veneer.

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Before and After photos