What Bonding and Contouring Teeth Mean

Improving the appearance of your smile can sometimes seem complicated, depending on the specific concerns that you want to address. For example, if your smile is marred by issues that affect your tooth structure, it might seem like improving them can require altering a significant amount of your tooth structure. However, with cosmetic tooth bonding and contouring, addressing a variety of smile concerns can be more convenient and less invasive than many people expect. Today, we examine what that could mean for your smile, both in terms of your treatment and your results for your overall oral health.

The minimally invasive nature of treatment

Tooth bonding and contouring are different procedures, but are often utilized to achieve similar results. That includes improving the size, shape, and appearance of one or more teeth while minimizing the amount of tooth structure that has to be altered in the process. For example, bonding a tooth involves applying custom-designed composite resin to the affected area of its structure, then sculpting and hardening the resin to restore the tooth’s healthy size and shape. Contouring involves lightly sculpting a small area of the tooth’s enamel to ensure that it matches the tooth’s ideal contour and the contour of your smile as a whole.

The benefits of bonding and/or contouring

The advantages to choosing tooth bonding and/or contouring as part of your smile improvement span from the results of your treatment to the overall impact that it has on your long-term oral health. For example, with more involved treatments, such as porcelain veneers or dental crowns, the process involves modifying your tooth’s structure to accommodate the restoration. While this alteration is still minimized as much as possible, it still involves permanent changes to your tooth’s natural structure. The benefits of bonding and contouring include minimizing these changes so they don’t impact your tooth’s strength and integrity in the future.

Using bonding and contouring for improved results

Many patients can benefit from bonding and/or contouring a tooth to improve its appearance and restore minor damage to its structure. The versatility of the treatments allows patients to address a wide range of concerns, including severe discoloration in a tooth or issues such as chips, light cracks, worn surfaces, and more. The minimal nature of bonding and contouring treatments also make them preferable in many instances to more involved treatments, and can produce similar cosmetic results.

Learn if you should consider bonding or contouring

Cosmetic tooth bonding and contouring can achieve more for your smile than you might realize. To learn more, call our Cleveland Family Dentistry office in Cleveland, TX, today at (281) 592-1234. We also serve the residents of Kingwood, Conroe, Livingston, and all surrounding communities.