At Victoria Place Dental Practice in the heart of beautiful Biggleswade, Bedfordshire we have a wealth of experience when it comes to dental veneers.
Regularly featured on television we can provide same-day digitally scanned and milled crowns and veneers, laboratory handcrafted beautiful Porcelain or Ceramic crowns, bridges, and veneers, or rapid and affordable composite resin bonding veneers, all in the comfort of our private dental practice.
Dental Veneers can be used to solve a multitude of cosmetic, developmental or disease issues that impact a smile.
In the gallery above you’ll find examples that include dental veneers for teeth straightening, correction of a gummy smile and teeth that developed too small with porous weak enamel, veneers to rebuild teeth destroyed by night grinding as well as simple decay as a result of neglect, all completed on local patients from Bedfordshire.
Veneers can also be used in combination with other options such as teeth whitening, teeth straightening, or dental implants to further enhance a smile. Click on each term to learn more. The last case in our gallery is one in which many of the above were utilised.
All of the pictures in our gallery are of our own patients who have been through the process with us and kindly given permission to show their images. We never use stock images of models in our marketing as we’d rather let our happy patients show what we’re able to do to help other local people just like them.
Embarrassment over an unsightly set of teeth can affect confidence and well being.
Talk to us if your smile is impacting your life. We’ll be happy to talk through the multitude of options available to help you. Throughout our process you the patient will always be made to feel a part of your own new smile design process
Frequently asked questions about Veneers
Dental veneers, also known as ‘porcelain veneers’, ‘ceramic veneers’ or ‘dental porcelain laminates’, are wafer-thin, custom-made coverings designed and manufactured from tooth-coloured materials to replace the front surface of teeth thereby improving their appearance and in some cases their health.
Veneers are a particularly good solution if teeth are decayed, pitted or porous or simply chipped, broken, worn or ground down. This might be as a result of injury, normal use or clenching and grinding issues.
These artificial coverings for the natural teeth are fixed using strong safe adhesives thereby changing their appearance.
Whether it be the colour, shape, size, straightness or any combination veneers provide a simple means to alter many factors to improve or repair a single tooth or transform a complete smile.
No medical or dental procedure should be considered ‘permanent’ in the truest meaning of the word.
After all we are only human; we age, we get damaged, in fact often the reason for veneering teeth is because they aged or got damaged. The processes that cause real natural teeth to require repair can in many cases likewise happen to an artificial veneer. That being said a veneer doesn’t know how old it is. Dental veneers could last indefinitely as long as they are taken care of properly.
There are six patients featured in our gallery above with over sixty ceramic teeth between them. None have required even a single unit to be replaced and they have lasted a combined grand total of over 70 years!
Feel free to visit our practice home page to learn more about us and why patients from across Bedfordshire choose us for their dental veneers;
Veneers themselves don’t damage teeth, however they are often used to repair already damaged, chipped, worn, decayed or otherwise unsightly teeth.
That being said veneers need to be made a certain thickness to give them enough strength. This is usually less than a single millimetre. The face of the tooth must therefore be ‘prepared’ by a dentist to receive a veneer with an imperceptible join. An experienced dentist with proper training can often achieve this degree of tooth preparation without severely impacting the long term health of the tooth.
There are also alternative materials to the typical ceramics and porcelains such as composite resin. This can be used by bonding the resin to even more minimally prepared teeth or in some cases with no preparation at all other than surface cleaning. This material can likewise be used to reshape or recolour the teeth to some degree in a process commonly known as ‘Bonding’.
Ceramic Veneering or Composite Resin Bonding can also be done in conjunction with orthodontic brace treatments to first realign the teeth, teeth whitening procedures or simple shape re-contouring. Whatever combinations in fact that could reduce the amount of tooth preparation required to achieve the agreed end appearance.
The cost of veneers essentially depends on the material chosen and the manufacturing process. Each material has it’s own pros and cons.
Some veneering materials are very low cost but not as life-like or strong such as the Composite Resin ‘Bonding’ materials. Though incredibly cost effective and quick to apply composite can be limited in its ability to correct colour and shape without becoming thick or plastic looking.
Digitally milled ceramic veneers on the other hand are stronger but require more tooth ‘preparation’ by the dentist so can take longer than composite to do.
Laboratory manufactured porcelain laminate veneers, hand crafted by a skilled ceramist, can be the most life-like and beautiful option but are also the most time consuming as they are a ‘bespoke’ product and not a ‘same-day’ option. They are also the most expensive option.
It should be noted all of the smiles corrected in our gallery above have had bespoke lab made veneer work as this produces the most natural and attractive outcome in our opinion.
Many patients, when they see the difference close up, on our screens during our consultations will often choose laboratory hand crafted ceramic veneers as it can be indistinguishable from real teeth – even to trained eyes.
So, depending on the material chosen, fit for the purpose it is required for, veneers can range in cost from anywhere between £250 to £1750 per tooth (depending on material choice and choice of ceramic artist technician) but could if cared for well potentially last a lifetime. (see our answer above to ‘Are Dental Veneers Permanent?’).
We recommend contacting us for a frank discussion of your needs to determine what the ideal choice for your goals would be.
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Well designed dental veneers should be safe to use to eat any ‘normal’ food, so long as patients are sensible and understand veneers will not make teeth ‘indestructible’.
The same things that can damage, chip or break real teeth will very likely do the same to a veneered tooth, so be wary of olive and peach stones or other hidden cores, take care when eating meats with bones, avoid crunching ice cubes, take care with cutlery and remember if drinking alcohol from a bottle one’s aim gets progressively worse the more bottles you get through. We can show you the results of a poorly aimed swig from a bottle.
Likewise, avoid using your teeth, veneered or otherwise, to trim nails, tear adhesive tape or open packets. That’s what scissors are for.
For patients waiting to have laboratory manufactured porcelain or ceramic work fitted they will typically be wearing temporary veneers for a few weeks. Temporaries are only held on with soft adhesives to make them easy to remove and replace once the lab work is ready. They are also made of much weaker plastic. These factors can make temporaries more prone to breaking with hard foods, staining with curries, red wine or fruit juices or coming off with sticky foods like sweets. So common sense should be used to avoid such foods & drinks during this phase of treatment with dental veneers.
For ‘Bruxists’, those unfortunate people who subconsciously grind or clench their teeth whilst asleep and sometimes even whilst awake, we recommend use of a custom made protective night-guard or ‘Bite Splint’. These are a small investment to protect a much bigger one. Bite Splints take the battering of ‘Bruxism’ so the risk to repaired teeth (and the remaining natural teeth) can be reduced.
