Veneers or bonding for a chipped front tooth?
For a single chipped front tooth, bonding. It goes on in one visit, usually with little or no drilling, and it costs a fraction of porcelain.
Porcelain earns its place when several things are wrong at once and they have to be solved together. One chip is not several things.
One visit
Composite shaped straight onto the tooth. Little or no enamel removed.
A few weeks
Exam and design, a preview you approve, then placement.
4 to 8 years
Then it is repolished or redone. The tooth is still intact.
Often 10 to 20 years
Enamel is removed first, and that does not come back.
When bonding is clearly right
- One or two chips, and the rest of the tooth is healthy
- A small gap you want closed without braces
- Worn edges that need length added rather than the whole tooth rebuilt
- You are young, and keeping enamel for another twenty years matters more than a perfect result today
When bonding stops being the answer
Composite is a soft material next to porcelain. It stains at the edges, it dulls, and it chips again if the force that chipped the tooth is still there. On one tooth that is a fair trade. Redoing it is cheap and the tooth stays whole.
Coating eight front teeth in composite and calling it a smile makeover is a different matter. Composite over many front teeth tends to pick up stain and lose its polish years sooner than porcelain, and it all ages together. For a full smile makeover, porcelain is usually the more durable recommendation.
The thing most people miss
A chipped front tooth in an adult is usually a clue rather than an accident. Enamel chips when something is loading it wrong, most often grinding or a bite that shifted after other teeth were lost or moved.
Repair the chip and ignore the cause and you will likely be back. Ask what caused it.
Written by Dr. Peter Bonifatto, DMD, a general dentist in Las Vegas whose practice focuses on cosmetic and restorative work. General information, not a diagnosis. What your own teeth need is decided at an exam, with x-rays.
Ask about your own teeth.
A comprehensive exam with photographs and x-rays, then a written plan with real figures you keep. Starts at $99, with no deposit on top of it.