Snap-on smiles

Is there such thing as dental flippers that cover all of your teeth (such as the ones beauty pageant contestants wear). If so, can you please provide me with more information?
-Jeri from Seattle

Jeri,
I’m guessing you may be referring to what is called a “snap-on smile.” This is a set of temporary acrylic teeth that are made to snap over your existing teeth for a temporary situation, such as a wedding.

But these aren’t worn by beauty pageant contestants, because while they may look okay from a distance, from close up they look a little fake, not first class. For beauty pageants, they get regular smile makeovers with porcelain veneers and/or porcelain crowns. Many of them also have Zoom whitening done or some other tooth whitening procedure. For beauty pageants, they need to look their best and snap-on smiles simply aren’t good enough.

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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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