Do you have a gap in your smile? Technically called a diastema, a gap between your front teeth is so highly visible that many people feel really uncomfortable with them as a result.
But you don’t have to feel uncomfortable because of a gap in your smile. Here are five ways to have a smile you love.
Learn to Love It
Before you think about changing your smile, it’s a good idea to first consider whether you can learn to love it as it is. After all, embracing your quirks can be a lot easier than changing them.
One of our basic principles of holistic dentistry is trying to preserve your natural teeth, and the most conservative treatment is to just do nothing. But if you can’t convince yourself that you should be happy with your smile gap, there are ways that you can change your smile.
Traditional Braces
Traditional braces used to be the main way that people corrected tooth gaps. It’s a very straightforward approach to improving the appearance of your smile: if the teeth are too far apart, just bring them together.
Although traditional braces are the oldest method of correcting smile gaps, it’s not necessarily the best. It can take months, even years, to achieve your results, and in the meantime you have to wear metal wires and brackets that are unattractive, restrict your diet, and can be hard to clean.
Invisalign
If you want to move your teeth to close your smile gap, Invisalign is a more modern approach that can achieve the same results, but with a better experience.
With Invisalign, you don’t have to wear metal brackets and wires. Instead, you put in clear plastic aligners that move your teeth. They’re completely removable, so you can keep eating a healthy diet–that includes a raw food, paleo, or other diet that can be difficult with braces.
And thanks to recent advances in Invisalign technology, you can get results in half the time.
Dental Bonding
But there are other ways to close that gap in your smile. Instead of moving your teeth, we can reshape them. Dental bonding lets us widen your teeth so that they fill the gap without needing to be moved. It’s a composite resin with ceramic inclusions that can be applied directly to your teeth, shaped, then hardened.
Dental bonding is quick–we can complete it in just one visit. Plus, it gives good initial cosmetic results, and it’s an inexpensive approach to closing your tooth gap. It does have some limitations–it’s not as strong or durable as other results, and it’s vulnerable to staining.
Veneers
Veneers give us another approach to reshaping your teeth. Instead of a composite, veneers are made of advanced ceramics that are beautiful and strong. We’ll take impressions of your teeth and send them to a lab. The lab crafts the veneers to perfectly match your other teeth and close the gap in your smile.
Veneers are the most beautiful and durable way to reshape your teeth. They can not only close the gap in your smile, they can brighten your teeth and lengthen them. They’re an ideal way to give yourself a smile makeover if that’s what you’re really looking for. Veneers are more expensive than bonding, and do require two visits to place, but they last much longer (10-20 vs. 3-5 years), and they are stain resistant.
What Do You Want to Do?
At Top Down Dental, we believe in taking a comprehensive approach to ensuring the health and beauty of your smile. That starts with listening to you and giving you the results you’re looking for. Let us help you deal with the gap in your smile.
Please call (408) 354-5600 today for an appointment with cosmetic dentist Dr. Nancy Nehawandian at Top Down Dental.
