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Building Houses And Designing Smiles, I Wonder What They Have In Common?

Inspiration for our dentistry updates comes from many places and after reading a recent article in the Fleet section of Get Hampshire about developers fighting a refusal for garden grabbing homes in Fleet, it has inspired us to talk about what happens if there is a lack of room and planning in your mouth!

The similarities between what is happening with the houses in Fleet and what happens with your teeth is quite remarkable.

Harmful to the character and appearance of the area

One of the arguments against the houses is that the development would be ..” out of keeping and harmful to the character and appearance of the area.”  This is also certainly true in dentistry, any dental work that is undertaken should always be absolutely in keeping and harmonious with the appearance of the surrounding area… In other words your mouth.

The temptation to opt for ‘cheap’ dentistry can be quite overwhelming at times, but the reality is that if corners are cut to reduce the cost this can often involve a reduction in quality. Particularly with treatments such as dental veneers or dental crowns this can be particularly harmful to the appearance if the cost is cut by using cheap dental laboratories.

Dental crowns and veneers should be harmonious with the surrounding teeth and your mouth and blend in perfectly to maintain your character. How many people have you seen with dental crowns that stand out a mile, much too bright and with a grey line around edge. This is simply low quality dentistry and is something we avoid at all costs at Time Dental.

As you can see from the image above our dental crowns blend harmoniously with the character and appearance of the surrounding area,

Planning

When it comes to building houses planning is absolutely crucial, planning to ensure that the final house is in exactly the correct place and that everyone is in agreement as to the final look and design of new houses. The same can be said of dentistry, planning is absolutely essential to achieving a great result.

Take this case for example.

There are typically months of planning which go into producing a case which define cosmetic enhancements achieved by this patient. Similar to the housing problem in Fleet, we had to ensure that these crowns and veneers fitted exquisitely with the surrounding environment of the patients face.

We will generally consult the patient and look at their skin complexion, do they tan in Summer, is there a big difference between their skin colour in the winter and that in other months or perhaps if they are a woman what colour make up do they wear? All of this has an impact on the decision of how we make the new teeth look. Someone that is pale skinned all year round could conceivably have lighter teeth than someone that is pale in the winter yet is very tanned in the summer.

A smile makeover has a tendency to look whiter if the surrounding area (the patient’s face) is much darker and so this is of great importance when deciding on the colour of the final crowns and veneers.

We also look at the patient’s face shape. Considering what type of face shape they have is also important in deciding the overall tooth shape. Notice the teeth above in the before photograph, they are particularly triangular.

The teeth in the after photograph are much less triangular and (although you can’t see it) fit much better with the patient’s face shape than the teeth before.

Understanding how your teeth fit in with the overall face and body shape is important to ensure that any cosmetic dentistry or smile makeover that you decide to have compliments you as a person.

Part of this planning process with a larger smile makeover case is to create what is known as a ‘Diagnostic Wax Up’ very much like the artists impressions when new housing projects are created – it makes you wonder why the artist impressions from the project in Fleet one picked up a little earlier!

This is why we always do everything we can to let every patient know what they are going to look like after treatment. The diagnostic wax up created will be on a replica of your exact teeth and mouth, we can show you exactly what you will look like once the smile makeover is complete.

This is the highest quality planning and dentistry that you will find.

In summary

As you can see, dentistry is very much like the problems they are having at the moment in Fleet, although not at fleet dentist! – it all comes down to good quality planning, discussion and management. Here’s a link to the original article, and a link to our page dedicated to looking after the teeth of the local people in fleet.

Let us know what you think, what other areas of life can you see that planning, discussion and management are important in?