Making Large Teeth Look Smaller: Veneer and All-Ceramic Crown Treatment

Hello, I'm Park Jonguk, DDS, MS, director of Dream Dental Clinic.

For patients with very large teeth,

the size of the teeth itself can be a real source of stress.

Quite a few patients come in wanting veneers or all-ceramic crowns

to make their overly large teeth look smaller.

Veneer treatment for large teeth is a fairly challenging treatment.

For women, tooth width is usually somewhere between 7 and 10mm.

7mm is a fairly small tooth, while 7.5 to 8.5mm is the size most commonly seen,

and anything over 8.5mm becomes a fairly large tooth.

At around 9-10mm, the tooth looks clearly too large even at a glance.

For patients with smaller faces in particular, even just over 8.5mm can make the teeth look large.

The problem is that the amount of tooth reduction for a veneer

is only around 0.5mm.

Even reducing 0.5mm doesn't help much, since the minimum thickness of the ceramic is about 0.2-0.3mm,

meaning the tooth ends up only about 0.2mm smaller.

And that's only in an ideal case.

So realistically, the size-reducing effect is close to none.

In other words, for a tooth to actually become smaller,

the amount of reduction needs to be at least 1mm before it makes a visible difference.

Rather than reducing that much,

it can be more effective to shift the goal away from actually making the tooth smaller

and toward making it look smaller instead.

The teeth were quite large with a strong bulky feel,

and there were cavities between the teeth that had been treated,

but they were discolored and partially chipped.

One front tooth had already had root canal treatment due to a severe cavity.

The shape of the tooth looked jar-like, making it appear even larger than its actual size.

In a case like this, to reduce the tooth down to an average size,

the amount of tooth reduction would need to be quite large.

As for how to approach treatment,

a very meticulous treatment plan needs to be worked out.

First, it needs to be confirmed whether the tooth structure actually allows it to be made smaller.

Depending on the size and shape of the dental arch, this may or may not be possible.

The amount by which the tooth can actually be made smaller is usually within 0.5mm.

What matters more than the actual size of the tooth is its proportion.

If the tooth achieves good proportions relative to the adjacent tooth,

it will look smaller than it actually is.

So it's necessary to work out exactly how much larger or smaller each individual tooth needs to be to achieve good proportions.

The shape of the tooth and its width-to-height ratio

are also factors that make a tooth look smaller.

In particular, an appropriate expression of dimension

is what makes a tooth look smaller.

With all of this in mind, we carry out the veneer diagnosis.

By carefully and thoroughly checking even the amount of tooth reduction,

we plan the treatment in a way that minimizes side effects.

During tooth reduction, using a guide

allows for reducing exactly the amount that's needed and no more,

and making a temporary tooth and reducing the tooth while checking the actual shape

makes even more precise reduction possible.

Adding a microscope on top of that,

you can think of it as using every available method for the most precise reduction possible today.

After veneer treatment, the actual size of the tooth decreased by only about 0.5mm,

but visually, it looks far smaller than that.

A bold expression of dimension in the tooth

and the optical illusion created by its shape are both very important.

The way the edge line of the tooth is handled,

as well as its translucency, also play an important role in making a tooth look smaller.

When the proportions between teeth are matched well with veneers,

a tooth can end up looking relatively larger or smaller,

and by making use of this effect,

the tooth can be made to look smaller.

With the veneers, the teeth became brighter and looked smaller,

giving the patient a noticeably improved smile.

Since 2006, Dream Dental Clinic