What Material Do Dentists Use for Dental Bonding?
What Is Dental Bonding?
It is a cosmetic dental procedure that can restore teeth by masking underlying imperfections to improve their appearance. Dental bonding in St. Cloud offers a remedy to various oral flaws that impact a smile’s aesthetics. A dentist can use dental bonding to improve teeth’ color, shape, size, and spacing. Some of the instances that would necessitate dental bonding near you are:
- Broken, chipped, or cracked teeth – tooth fractures are common after an injury. However, they can also occur due to poor oral habits like biting fingernails or eating hard foods like popcorn kernels.
- Stained teeth – dental discoloration is a common problem in dentistry, affecting children and adults alike. Stubborn teeth stains can be unresponsive to direct enamel bleaching. Therefore, you may consider dental bonding to mask the stubborn stains and whiten your teeth.
- Oddly shaped teeth – crooked teeth are not the only concern regarding teeth shape. You can have unusually short, pointy, or rounded teeth. Sometimes, wearing down teeth can give them odd shapes. Dental bonding can help restore your smile through teeth contouring.
- Spaces between teeth – the most common type of improper spacing in dentistry is midline diastema. It features the gap affecting the two front incisors. Such a gap would require wearing braces to close it. However, dental bonding can close gaps up to 0.5mm apart.
What Does the Procedure Entail?
At Smile City, we consider dental bonding one of the swiftest cosmetic procedures in dentistry. The reason is that restoring a tooth with dental bonding should take between 39 to 45 minutes. Besides, the treatment is rather a non-invasive approach to modifying teeth’ appearance.
The initial step of dental bonding near you involves roughening your tooth surface using a conditioning liquid. This step should promote the adhesion of the resin to your natural tooth structure. Only in special cases does the dentist in St. Cloud, MN, have to drill your tooth before dental bonding. Usually, it is typical when you have advanced damage that requires contouring first.
After roughening your tooth, the dentist proceeds to apply and mold the putty-like resin material. The resin should apply easily because of the roughened surface and its consistency. The dentist then uses a laser or UV light to harden the resin, bonding it to your tooth structure. This step will continue back and forth until the dentist determines an ideal shape, height, and thickness that matches your natural teeth.
After the hardening, the dentist will polish the tooth to give it a final glare that looks and feels like natural teeth.
What Material Is Used for Dental Bonding?
Dentists typically use composite for cosmetic teeth bonding. It is a tooth-colored material that can restore teeth amply, lasting for between 5 to 7 years. Composites provide an alternative to other dental materials like porcelain and metals that may require compromising your tooth enamel to make space for them. The reason is that composite is typically a putty-like resin instead of a solid piece as is the case with porcelain.
Composites are the reason dentists can employ dental bonding to treat tooth cavities. The composite material can seal the tooth to prevent the entry of bacteria into the inner layers. In this case, composite bonding works as an alternative dental filling approach, composite fillings.
Is Composite a Worthwhile Material for Cosmetic Dentistry?
The beauty of modern dentistry is that you always have options. Therefore, if you do not want composites for restoring your teeth, you can try other alternatives, like porcelain. However, composite bonding presents several benefits to cosmetic dentistry, including the following:
- It is reversible – applying composite on your teeth does not require shaving or trimming your enamels. Therefore, if you want to remove your composites, you can do so without needing an instant replacement procedure. The composite will not affect your natural teeth structure.
- It looks like natural teeth – you can pick a color that closest matches your natural teeth. Therefore, your bonded teeth will not stand out from the rest of your natural ones.
- Preserving tooth structure – since drilling is not necessarily prerequisite for composite bonding, you preserve your natural tooth structure.