Dental bonding is a cosmetic dental procedure. Its goal is to make damaged front teeth look smooth, beautiful, and even. Bonding involves carefully molding a tooth-colored putty against the damaged or unsightly spot on a tooth and curing it with a light so that it knits a tight bond with the enamel.
What Dental Bonding Can Fix
Bonding can repair cosmetic problems and enhance the appearance of your front teeth in a variety of ways including:
- Repair chipped enamel
- Fill in gaps between front teeth
- Make unevenly shaped teeth look even
- Smooth out rough patches of enamel
- Mask stubborn stains
The Tooth Bonding Procedure: What to Expect
Dr. Marion will start by examining all of your teeth and determining which ones can benefit from dental bonding.
At your treatment appointment, he will start by slightly roughing up your tooth in the area where the bonding will go. Next, Dr. Marion will apply a conditioner-like substance to the area that needs bonding. This gel etches the enamel to make it more porous and receptive to binding with the bonding material.
Then, Dr. Marion will apply the dental putty material (called composite) that he has carefully color-matched to the hue of your natural teeth. This will ensure that your bonding doesn’t stand out as different. Dr. Marion shapes and molds the composite to fill in and smooth away inconsistencies until your tooth looks whole. Then, he cures the material to set the bond and then polishes the area to a fine finish so that the border between tooth and bonding material is indistinguishable.
A chipped tooth prior to bonding.
The final result after bonding.
If you look closely at the images above, you’ll notice that teeth aren’t one solid shade of white. Instead, they contain a subtle spectrum of hues, being slightly darker at the gum line and more translucent at the very tip of the tooth. When Dr. Marion places bonding, he doesn’t place a patch of solid white material. Instead, he gradually layers on different shades to match the color and translucency of your own tooth to achieve a realistic result.
Dental bonding is usually a quick and conservative procedure that requires little or no drilling of the existing tooth material. This means that you won’t feel much and probably won’t even need any anesthetic.
Bonding is a great way to round off any smile makeover. If you’re interested in seeing what bonding can do for your smile, request a visit with Dr. Marion.