What Are Porcelain Veneers?

Porcelain veneers also known as dental veneers or dental porcelain laminates, are wafer-thin shells of porcelain that have been bonded onto the front side of teeth to create a cosmetic improvement for a tooth. Porcelain veneers are often used by dentists as a way to make cosmetic changes for teeth that have been discolored, worn, chipped, or misaligned.

Porcelain veneer techniques are an offshoot of the basic science of cosmetic dental bonding. Dentists have had available materials to them for decades have been capable of creating a fast and hard bond with tooth enamel. The porcelain veneer technique will utilize the bonding capabilities of these materials to securely attach a thin shell of porcelain (the porcelain veneer) to the tooth. Although porcelain is commonly brittle, when it is adhered to a sturdy substructure (a tooth) it becomes a very strong and durable material.

You may be surprised to learn that while a large portion of every tooth is actually composed of dental enamel, teeth are not a solid enamel. The actual enamel component of your teeth is just an outer encasement. The hard tooth tissue that lies underneath a tooth's enamel layer is called dentin.

One component of tooth enamel is that it is translucent. This means that when light strikes a tooth's surface it will not be immediately reflected off, but instead penetrates into its enamel layers. Once the light does passed through the full thickness of the enamel it reflects off the opaque (non-translucent) tooth dentin that lies underneath, and then on back of the tooth. The manner in which the teeth handle the light, the translucency effect of a tooth's enamel, is an important aspect of what will give your teeth their characteristic lustrous appearance.

Previously the only cosmetic dental bonding material that a dentist had available to them was just a semi-translucent material. This meant that most of the light that struck a repaired tooth did not penetrate into the bonding but instead it reflected off its outer surface. The basic result was that while the bonding did give the tooth an improved appearance, there was no sense of translucency or luster.

Since porcelain veneers are more like glass in nature (ceramic) they have a great advantage over other cosmetic bonding techniques because they are translucent. Once a porcelain veneer is bonded onto a tooth's surface, it will more closely mimic the light handling characteristics of the original dental enamel.

When light has struck the surface of a veneered tooth, it can penetrate on into the veneer's porcelain, just as it will with dental enamel. Once the light has traversed the full thickness of the porcelain it will then reflect off the opaque cement and tooth dentin that lies underneath the veneer, and then go on back out of the tooth. This translucency effect of the porcelain will create a lustrous appearance for the tooth that very much resembles the appearance of enamel.