Hi. It’s Dr Michael Ghobrial here, from Sure Dental.
Often we see teenagers who have just finished orthodontic treatment or we’ve done orthodontic treatment for them and they have small teeth, or just particular teeth are a bit small, or gaps that they want to be closed up. And we often get asked, can teenagers get veneers? How young is too young to get veneers? And so I thought I would do this blog to help you understand what’s appropriate for teenagers and what might have to hold off for a little while.
So the question is, can teenagers get veneers? Probably before you can answer that, we need to know what we’re talking about when we say veneers. If we’re talking porcelain veneers, then on most occasions, in my hands, I would want to hold off because when we do the veneers and finish them near the gum line, we need to remember that teenagers aren’t fully developed yet and their gum height’s not fully set. And so what could look like a really lovely veneer, in three or four years’ time, there’ll be a join line as the gums mature and move up a little bit and it’ll look horrible. And so we tend to avoid porcelain veneers on teenagers.
But we often do resin veneers and resin buildups on teenagers. Now, the benefit of the resin is that we can polish or add to it easily. It may not last quite as long as the porcelain veneer, but it does a great job to improve the smile while we wait for full gum maturation to happen and to be a more suitable option to have porcelain veneers. Or if they like the resin, they can keep getting the resin replaced. And so can teenagers get veneers? The answer is yes, kind of. They can absolutely get resin veneers, but generally, we would hold off on longer-lasting treatments like porcelain veneers that cost a bit more money. We wait till we’ve got that gum maturation so we can get a good, long-term, stable result.
I hope you found this blog useful. If you have teenagers that need teeth built up or veneers placed, we’d love to chat with you. Drop us a line on our inquiries on our website at suredental.com.au. Otherwise, direct message us through social media or give us a call at 07 3113 9698.
