Today we’re talking about cosmetic bonding. When we’re straightening teeth, they move in stages. Teeth move from where they were in the original position. Sometimes some teeth wear more than others because the original position they were in the edge rubs more or chips more. So when we come to the end of straightening, sometimes there are minor changes that people want to make to their teeth shapes.
What is cosmetic bonding?
As we can see nobody is the same. Everybody has a different smile. And we start to notice that when some teeth become straight, there might be some edges or some uneven widths or uneven thicknesses that we want to improve. Those are not to be improved with the aligners because the aligners improve the tooth position, they do not change the tooth shape.
What we want to do is use something called cosmetic bonding. Cosmetic bonding is a procedure done in dental clinics and it’s where a resin is attached to the tooth which matches the tooth color. They use a special light to set it and it becomes hard on the tooth. No injections are needed at all.
Why would cosmetic bonding be needed?
Even if you’re doing aligners, when the teeth are straight, they might still not look straight. That’s because the edges are uneven. In this situation, these teeth are straight but we’ve teeth edges from teeth grinding. If you use cosmetic bonding, you make the teeth look straight.
It can also be used if some of the teeth are quite triangular. Commonly when teeth are overlapping, you don’t see that part of the tooth. But when you uncross the teeth, that’s when you start to notice what’s called black triangles. These are little spaces between the teeth. This is because this tooth is narrower here than it was before. The solution here is to do some bonding and that can help improve the shape of the teeth.
It can also be used in some mild cases instead of aligners. If a person got a gap, by using some bonding, the dentist can camouflage the gap. The main thing to understand is that the surface of the composite bonding does need some polishing and some care over time.
The reason why is cosmetic bonding used are:
- To cut fix chipped teeth or uneven edges
- To harmonize uneven teeth
- To close small gaps between the teeth
- To correct black triangles between triangular teeth
- To correct tooth shape variations after orthodontic treatment
Every smile is different and the purpose is to understand is, aligning, whitening, bonding, we might choose all of them or some of them. It’s important to understand that, it’s about your smile to be the best it possibly can be. So if you want to understand more, speak to a dentist or do any consultation and you get more information. Hope you found that helpful!