Dark, stained or discoloured teeth can have a negative impact on your confidence and self esteem. Sometimes no matter how well you clean your teeth at home other external factors such as food, drink, smoking, old fillings and age can cause your teeth to lose their natural brightness. How happy are you with the current colour of your teeth?

Ideally if we were to draw a line vertically in the middle of your smile, the left side and the right side should be mirror images of each other. This is called the Centreline. The more asymmetric the left side and the right side the more unbalance you see in your smile.

Symmetry around the centreline of our face is of great importance for an aesthetically pleasing smile. Even when this is not 100% possible, the illusion of symmetry should be created. The front two upper central incisors should be symmetrical in size, length and shape.

How symmetrical are your teeth?

Teeth that are not aligned correctly give a crooked appearance. They may be rotated, tilted or stick out. Also, there is more risk of infection due to the difficulty in cleaning ability. Crooked teeth can also lead to bite problems.

How crooked are your teeth?

Throughout life teeth can suffer from natural wear and tear. However, sometimes this can lead to excessive tooth wear and your teeth begin to look shorter. This gives a very aged look and can also affect the way your teeth support the lips and cheeks. This causes premature facial lines contributing to the aged appearance of your smile.

Are you aware of a worn, tired or aging smile?

Have you lost teeth or have spacing between your teeth? Missing teeth or spacing between teeth can lead to misalignment of other teeth or bite problems in the future. There may also be too much pressure on the remaining teeth causing excessive tooth wear.

Do you have unsightly gaps between your teeth? How bad are they?

For a great smile every tooth in your smile should have a size that is proportionate to its neighbouring teeth. When teeth are either too long, too short, too narrow or too wide compared to other teeth in the smile, the resulting smile cannot look good.

The rule of Golden Proportion describes an ideal ratio of the visible widths of the front six teeth. These are the guidelines for the ideal proportions of each tooth to achieve a beautiful smile.

How correctly sized are your teeth?

If you have wide lips causing you to smile widely but have a narrow arch then the resulting smile can look too small. On the other hand if you have narrow lips but disproportionate width of smile the smile can look too big for your face.

With a narrow smile the side teeth are often in shadow. A wider smile allows one to see the ideal progression from the front to the back teeth – this is more attractive!

How happy are you to smile as wide as you can in public?

Ideally the smile line should be aligned so it is parallel to the horizontal line. We measure this by looking at the horizontal line that passes both our pupils in our eyes.

How parallel is your Horizontal Line?

The edges of your upper teeth should be parallel to the lower lip when you smile.

How parallel is your Smile Line?

The gum line connects the highest points of the gum levels of the upper teeth. Ideally this line should follow the line of the upper lip, to ensure minimum gum exposure and optimum display of the teeth on smiling.

How balanced is your Gum Line?

Embrasures are the small triangular spaces between the tips of the teeth. These are artistically created by the ceramist and cosmetic dentist hertfordshire to ensure a natural look.

Lips are to teeth as a frame is to a picture! The shape, fullness and symmetry of lips can optimise the ideal smile.

How happy are you with your lips?