Enhancing your smile with porcelain veneers can be life changing for most patients! Veneers create beautiful teeth, which allow you to smile with confidence. This can help you achieve your personal and professional goals. While porcelain veneers are stain resistant, there are some things your Framingham cosmetic dentist wants you to know about your veneers that will help you make the most of your investment in your smile.
What is a Porcelain Veneer?
Dental veneers are comprised of a thin, micro-layer of porcelain that covers each tooth. The veneers are coated with a protective, stain-resistant resin that helps them maintain their shade and protects the veneers from damage. Keeping the coating intact is the key to your veneers remaining stain resistant.
If the protective resin coating is scratched or damaged, by eating hard foods or using abrasive toothpastes, it will eventually begin to allow staining to happen.
Protecting Your Investment
Just like with your natural teeth, it’s important to protect your veneers by limiting certain foods and beverages and avoiding biting into hard foods such as apples, carrots, or crusty bread. These foods can still be enjoyed in smaller bite size pieces that don’t run the risk of breaking or damaging your veneers.
Acidic foods and drinks will also wear away the protective coating of resin on your veneers over time. So be wary of food like lemons, marinara sauces, and soy sauce.
Beverages to be aware of that cause the most staining and discoloration are:
- Coffee and black tea
- Red wine
- Dark colas
The other lifestyle factor that greatly affects your teeth and veneers is smoking or tobacco use. Smoking leaves a yellow film on your teeth that is hard to clean with just brushing alone; not to mention the damage to your overall health and increased risk of