Sale Dental Spa
Cosmetic dentistry follows trends like anything else, and reality television has shaped a few of them. For several years the smile associated with programmes like Love Island meant bright, uniform veneers. More recently the interest has moved towards clear aligners and results that are much harder to spot.
That shift is worth understanding, because the two treatments do very different things to your teeth.
The original television smile was easy to recognise. Very white veneers changed the shape, colour and apparent alignment of the front teeth in a matter of weeks.
Veneers are still a useful treatment. They can address chips, worn edges, gaps and discolouration that will not respond to whitening, and they can do it quickly. For some cases they remain the right answer.
What changed was the volume. As the look became more common it also became more recognisable, and being recognisable was the opposite of what many people wanted.
Public taste moved on. The very uniform veneer smile started to read as obviously done, and attention moved towards treatments that improve the teeth you already have rather than resurfacing them.
The direction is clear enough in our own consultation room: more people are asking to straighten the teeth they have.
This is not only a question of fashion. Porcelain veneers usually involve removing a thin layer of enamel, and enamel does not grow back. That can be a reasonable trade in a tooth that is already chipped, worn or heavily stained. It is a much bigger decision when the tooth underneath is healthy and simply sitting out of line.
Aligners move the teeth you already have. Nothing is removed. Where the real issue is crowding, spacing or rotation, straightening first often means less work overall, and sometimes it means no veneers at all. If a little reshaping is still wanted afterwards, composite bonding can be added from £300 per tooth.
Something we see often: someone books a consultation and mentions they have been thinking about straightening their teeth for two or three years. The deliberating took longer than the treatment would have.
Straightforward Invisalign cases usually take somewhere between six and twelve months. More complex cases take longer, and some are not suitable for aligners at all. Your dentist should tell you which category you are in before you commit to anything.
We use a 3D intraoral scanner at the practice. It is not there to look impressive. It is there because most people have never really looked at their own teeth in detail, and a scan makes the conversation concrete.
You can see where the crowding actually is, what a proposed set of movements would achieve and, just as usefully, what it would not achieve. There are things aligners cannot fix. It is better to know that at the start than halfway through.
Invisalign at Sale Dental Spa starts from £2,200. Porcelain veneers are £1,200 per tooth as a complete package. A Smile Design consultation is free and is the sensible place to start if you are weighing the two against each other. Our full fees are on the fees page.
Crooked teeth are not an emergency and nobody has to change their smile. What we would say is that straighter teeth are easier to clean, and that a consultation is free if you want to understand your options properly rather than from a phone screen.
You can book online at sale-dental-care.portal.dental or call us on 0161 969 7464. There is more detail on Invisalign and porcelain veneers on our treatment pages.
The Smile Design consultation is free, there is nothing to pay and nothing to commit to. Call 0161 969 7464, or book online and we will take it from there.
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