Dental crowns are useful restorations, but if it’s your child’s tooth that needs this prosthetic reinforcement, you might be a bit nervous. Smile aesthetics can affect someone’s self-esteem, after all. You don’t want your kid to feel awkward because of an obvious dental crown.
Fortunately, modern color-matching ensures that dental restorations blend in seamlessly with natural teeth. To learn more about this interesting process, keep reading.
The Right Pigments for The Job
The first step in creating the perfect color for your child’s crown is to determine what pigments make up their natural pearly whites. You see, teeth aren’t typically a “true white” color unless they’ve been cosmetically treated.
Where their shade leans on the color wheel will depend on genetics – and what they’re wearing! Even yellow- or grey-tinted whites are easily influenced by other colors, so it’s best to make sure your kiddo isn’t wearing bright, intense colors or makeup to their color-matching appointment.
Comparing and Contrasting Teeth
Rest assured; your pediatric dentist has a highly trained eye when it comes to picking out individual pigments from a blended shade. However, part of an accurate color-match is double- and triple-checking what you see. Tooth color guides are handy tools that can help your pediatric dentist pinpoint the tones in your loved one’s dental lineup.
These look like a ruler or stick displaying several different false teeth on a color gradient. If you see your pediatric dentist holding this up to your child’s teeth, know that they’re carefully looking for the guide tooth that most closely matches their dental tones.
Color Technicians
Once your pediatric dentist feels confident in their color-match selection, they’ll send this information off to a lab, along with photos of your kid’s teeth for comparison. These artistic lab technicians have crown creation down to a science, and are uniquely qualified to discern pigments and reproduce accurate shades.
It typically takes some meticulous experimentation to craft the perfect tooth-like color. Essentially, colored ceramic powders are blended together in different ratios until the magic solution is found. After that, all that’s left for the technicians to do is “bake” the color onto your child’s dental crown.
Dedication to Quality Assurance
The color-matching process for dental crowns involves multiple steps and checks. At the end of the day, your pediatric dentist also wants your child’s restoration to look as real as possible, so they’ll work diligently with their color fabrication team to produce quality results. You and your loved one can be reasonably confident that onlookers won’t be able to tell the difference between crown and tooth!
About the Practice
At Waterford Pediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics of Dublin, we’re proud to have several compassionate, board-certified pediatric dentists on staff. Each has received special training for helping kids and teens with their oral care, so you know your loved one will be in good hands during their treatment. If you have questions or concerns about dental crowns, don’t hesitate to give our office a call at 925-803-6880.