Why More Dental Fillings Are Tooth-Colored

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If you’ve never received a tooth filling to treat a cavity, or haven’t had one placed in a long time, then you might expect yours to be made of metal, and have a few questions about how that might impact your smile. However, more and more of today’s tooth fillings are designed to be more lifelike and discreet than traditional metal fillings. Crafted from more biocompatible composite resin, a tooth-colored filling not only treats your cavity, but also helps restore your tooth’s healthy, natural appearance in the process.

How to make it tooth-colored

In addition to conforming to the shape of your cavity more precisely, tooth-colored composite resin is also highly customizable. Instead of metal, the resin is comprised of finely ground acrylic and quartz-like particles. This gives the resin the ability to be tinted to match the unique color and shade of your healthy, natural tooth structure. This ability is a significant improvement over traditional metal fillings, which only come in the color of the metal that dominates the amalgam mixture.

Saving your tooth with a filling

Tooth-colored fillings have grown popular for many reasons, most notably for their ability to blend in with your smile. However, they’ve only remained popular because they also perform the functions of a tooth filling with optimal results. The point of a filling is to treat a tooth that has developed a cavity, which is the result of decay infecting the tooth’s structure. To stop the cavity from growing, your dentist will clean the cavity of oral bacteria and infected tooth structure. Then, restoring the tooth will require filling the cavity with a biocompatible material. The composite resin that tooth-colored fillings are made from can conform precisely to the shape of the cavity before being hardened, making them an optimal choice as a filling.

The benefits of tooth-colored fillings

With a filling that blends in with your tooth’s appearance, you can treat your cavity with much greater discretion than would be possible with a metal filling. However, the resin’s ability to conform to your cavity and to bond securely to the tooth’s structure also give it several important long-term benefits for the health of your tooth. A tooth filling is meant to protect and restore a cavity-stricken tooth, which means sealing and protecting the cavity itself from harmful oral bacteria. With a biocompatible resin filling, the seal created when the material is bonded to the tooth creates a highly durable barrier that reduces the risks of bacteria slipping past it.

Learn why your filling should be tooth-colored

Thanks to their many different cosmetic and restorative benefits, more people choose tooth-colored fillings to successfully treat their cavities. 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.