Can I bleach my teeth after getting Lumineers?

Two years ago, I got Lumineers on my top teeth. At the time, I did not have the money to fix the bottom ones, so I just left them alone. Now I want to bleach my teeth, but am not sure what that will do to my Lumineers. Thanks for your help.

Taryn in South Fork

Dear Taryn,

Are you looking to bleach just your bottom teeth, or both the bottom and the top? If you are hoping to make both your natural bottom teeth and your Lumineers whiter, I am afraid you are in for a disappointment.

Your bottom teeth will certainly respond to the bleaching process. Check out our page on Zoom Whiteningto read more about what is involved with that procedure. That being said, teeth whitening procedures will do nothing to change the color of your Lumineers. They are as white now as they are ever going to get, so I hope they are a color you like. This is true not just of Lumineers, but of all brands of porcelain veneers. Bleaching will not harm them, but it also will not whiten them.

If you were coming into our office to get Lumineers or some other brand of porcelain veneers, we would advise you to chose the shade you want to wind up with, rather than trying to match the shade of your lower teeth. Hopefully your dentist has done the same, and now the bleaching process on your lower teeth will make them closer to the color of your Lumineers.

I hope you wind up with the result you want!

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Lumineers and receding gums

I have a few teeth with receding gums. Can lumineers be made to cover up the exposed gums also if I have my teeth covered by lumineers?
- Jeri from Missouri

Jeri,
You have to be very careful about what dentist you will allow to do this, but with a highly artistic dentist, yes, you can use porcelain veneers to cover your teeth and make them look more natural when you have receding gums. When done right, your smile can be made to look more youthful and it won’t appear like you have receding gums. But it’s a situation where the cosmetic dentist needs a lot of experience with smile makeovers and a strong sense of artistry to be able to create a natural-looking result, because the exposed roots have to be camouflaged, long teeth have to be made to look shorter, and the dark triangles that usually occur with receding gums have to be dealt with.

And you asked about Lumineers, but I answered with the more generic term of porcelain veneers. Lumineers is a particular brand of porcelain veneers, and I believe there are better brands. So don’t get hung up over the brand name. In fact, I would stay away from dentists that promote themselves as “Lumineers” dentists. Most expert cosmetic dentists don’t like to use the Lumineers laboratory because it’s a large, impersonal laboratory. Especially for a case like yours, you will need a more customized approach.

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How much tooth is shaved for porcelain veneers or Lumineers?

How much tooth structure is shaved away when you do porcelain veneers? And if I later decided that I wanted to have them removed, could I?

And if I got Lumineers instead of conventional porcelain veneers, would that be reversible? Could I have my teeth put back the way they were?
- Jude from Kentucky

Jude,
For conventional porcelain veneers, cosmetic dentists remove about 0.5 millimeter of tooth structure from the front of the tooth only. That’s approximately the thickness of a fingernail. We don’t really remove any from the sides. But there are variations from case to case. If your teeth are really crooked, for example, we shave more from the parts of the teeth that stick out more and little or nothing from the parts that are turned in.

As far as later removing them, this raises an interesting issue. I wouldn’t call the placing of conventional porcelain veneers a reversible process. The desire to allow for the possibility of removing them later is understandable. But it all my years and the thousands of porcelain veneers I have placed, I have never once had someone even hint of any desire to reverse them and go back to how their teeth were. They love them. So this idea of wanting to go back to the way you were, it isn’t reality - not if they’re done right in the first place.

Most excellent cosmetic dentists will have some type of procedure in place to insure that you will love your porcelain veneers. That is your best insurance for this kind of procedure, not having an escape for being able to go back to how your teeth were.

No-prep porcelain veneers, such as Lumineers, are theoretically reversible. You should be able to take them off down to the original enamel. But removing them without damaging the teeth any, that is another question. The dentist definitely needs to have the skill to be able to pull that off, and there may be no guarantee that the teeth underneath will be undamaged.

Lumineers and other no-prep porcelain veneers add bulk and length to the teeth, and they cause other problems. We take great pride in our work and want it all to look stunning. Yes, part of us wants to be cautious and be able to reverse the process if we later decide we want to. But sometimes caution can rob us of excellence. Some people hesitate to cultivate meaningful relationships because it’s safer to just keep to themselves. It’s similar with your appearance - if you’re too cautious, you will simply not get the beautiful smile that you could have had.

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