Porcelain veneers

A veneer 0.3 to 0.5mm thick is semi-translucent. Light passes through it and reflects back off the tooth surface beneath. What that means is that the colour you finally see is a blend of the ceramic and the underlying tooth — not the colour you picked off a shade guide.

On an evenly light-coloured tooth, thin ceramic gives the translucent, lifelike effect of real enamel. On a tooth greyed by tetracycline, or a root-treated tooth that has darkened, that exact same shell will read grey. Masking a dark base requires thicker, more opaque ceramic — and thicker ceramic means more reduction, which defeats the reason for choosing a veneer in the first place.

So at the assessment appointment, recording the shade of the underlying tooth on a dedicated stump-shade guide matters as much as recording the shade you want. Where the base is simply too dark, the honest advice is a full crown, rather than bonding a veneer anyway and blaming the lab when the result looks dull.

A veneer is not held on by mechanical shape the way a crown is — it is held by a chemical bond between enamel, resin cement and the fitting surface of the ceramic, which has been treated with hydrofluoric acid and silane. That bond is very strong and extremely sensitive to moisture.

A trace of saliva or humid breath touching freshly etched enamel is enough to reduce adhesion substantially — and you will not find out in the chair, because the shell still sticks. It comes off six months to a year later, usually while eating.

A rubber dam isolates the teeth completely from lips, cheek, tongue and saliva throughout bonding. It adds 15 to 20 minutes per case, which is why some places skip it. At Dental Việt Nam a veneer is not bonded if it cannot be isolated — with no exception made for running late.

Emax glass ceramic has a flexural strength of roughly 400 MPa. That is enough for physiological chewing but not for night-time grinding, which can be several times higher and go on for hours without the person grinding knowing anything about it.

Signs worth checking before deciding: flattened incisal edges, cupped wear on molar surfaces, a white ridged line on the inside of the cheek at the level of the bite plane, or jaw muscles that ache on waking. Where these are present, either switch to bonded zirconia or make a night guard part of the treatment, not an optional extra.

A night guard is not an upsell. For someone who grinds, it is the condition under which the warranty means anything — no ceramic manufacturer stands behind a veneer fractured by grinding when no guard was worn.