Dental Tooth Bonding: Benefits and Uses

Keep smiling! If you’ve felt that you should stop doing so because a few minor cosmetic issues like cracks in your teeth, little chips and stains or shape irregularities have spoilt your teeth’s appearance, you can, quite literally, start bonding with your smile all over again. With some creative help from your experienced Surrey dentist, and some dental tooth bonding, you will be set to go!

Dental bonding is one of the easiest and quickest ways to take your smile from embarrassing to dazzling in a short period of time, taking only about 30 minutes to an hour per tooth to accomplish the change. It is also not very invasive, involving just a small amount of roughening of the tooth’s surface to ensure that the composite resin can stick to it well.

The Tooth Bonding Process

Your dentist will choose a composite resin that matches your tooth colouring as nearly as possible using a shade guide and then mix it to a putty-like consistency. After the tooth surface has been roughened and a conditioning liquid applied, this putty will be attached to the tooth surface, moulded into the required shape and smoothed. It is then hardened using a laser or ultra-violet light before being trimmed and shaped and then polished to match the rest of your teeth.

When is Tooth Bonding the best choice?

Tooth bonding is ideal for most of the smaller dental problems that can affect the aesthetics of your smile. These include small gaps between your teeth, misshapen teeth, cracks, factures and chips, as well as stained or discolored teeth. It can also be used to change the appearance of your teeth by making them longer, wider or adjusting their shape completely so they fit in well with the rest of your teeth. Bonding can replace silver-colored fillings, and provide a less obtrusive solution to dealing with decay and be used to delay or avoid the need for veneers or crowns.

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to change your smile, it’s got to be the best choice in terms of speed of results and procedure time, and it requires minimal sacrifice of enamel or bits of your tooth compared with some other cosmetic treatments. Anaesthetics are usually not needed unless the composite resin is being used to replace an existing filling.

Aftercare

Initially, your dentist will suggest you stay away from any beverages that might stain the new bonding. The resin is particularly porous when it is new so extra care is needed in the first 48 hours. However, it might be worthwhile to reconsider how much coffee, tea and red wine you drink in the future if you want your revamped smile to last a long time. Unfortunately for smokers, the resin’s porous quality means that smoking is not an option at all if you want to avoid your habit gradually discoloring your new teeth as time goes on.

Like other artificial tooth fixes, bonding will not respond to chemical whitening, so once the stains are visible they always will be.

After going through the dental bonding process you will need to ensure that you brush your teeth every day and make regular appointments for professional cleanings. Is it worth it? Just smile at yourself in the mirror once it’s done and you will have your answer: Of course, it is!