Chips, Cracks, Gaps—5 Dental Issues Bonding Can Address

Dental bonding is a quick but effective method of treating many dental issues.

What’s the name of a cosmetic dentistry treatment that’s placed on the surface of your teeth to resolve dental issues? If you immediately thought of veneers, you’re right—but that’s not the only answer that fits the bill! The other answer is dental bonding, which uses a tooth-colored resin to quickly and easily resolve many of the same problems as veneers.

Dental bonding takes just a single appointment at the dentist and it can be tinted and buffed to match your natural teeth, ensuring it looks completely natural. Dental bonding has its own strengths and weaknesses, but its versatility, natural appearance, quick treatment time, and low price make it ideal for many patients. Here are 5 dental issues that you may be able to address with dental bonding.

1. Chipped or Cracked Teeth

Chipping or cracking a tooth is never fun, but it’s a common dental injury. The good news is that this means that there are plenty of treatment options for you to choose from if you chip or crack your tooth! Dental bonding is one of these options as it can be used to seal and cover a crack or to reshape a chipped tooth. This restores the appearance of your tooth, helping it look like it was never injured, but it’s not a purely cosmetic treatment. Since injured teeth are more vulnerable to decay and additional injuries, applying dental bonding protects your tooth and keeps it healthier in the long term.

While the resin used in dental bonding isn’t as durable as other materials, it’s strong enough to stand up to daily wear and tear on teeth towards the front of your mouth. That said, its less-durable nature means that other treatments are sometimes the better option. For example, molars exert a lot of force as you chew, so restorative treatments like dental crowns or inlays and onlays are generally best for cracked or chipped molars.

Similarly, a dental crown is likely the best choice if you habitually clench or grind your teeth, even if the injury is on a front tooth. Despite this, dental bonding is incredibly effective at treating chipped or cracked teeth. With proper care, it can even last between five and 10 years. These differences just go to show how unique every case is and how important it is to choose a treatment based on your unique needs!

2. Gap-Toothed Smiles

If you have a gap-toothed smile, which is when there’s a small but noticeable gap between two of your teeth, dental bonding offers a quick and easy solution. Your dentist will apply a small amount of resin to the sides of the teeth next to the gap. This slowly closes the gap without changing the shape or size of either tooth too much. A special light is used to cure the resin before your dentist shapes and buffs it to ensure it matches the teeth around it. By the time your treatment is complete, no one will be able to tell it’s even there!

One factor that makes dental bonding such a great solution for gap-toothed grins is the fact that it’s completely reversible, giving you room to change your mind or choose a different treatment option in the future. Dental bonding is easy to remove if you decide that you miss the gap in your smile or that you want to undergo orthodontic treatment to close it more permanently.

3. Tooth Sensitivity

Dental issues like enamel erosion or gum recession can lead to tooth sensitivity. This sensitivity often takes the form of sharp pains in your teeth in response to sugary foods and temperature changes from hot and cold foods, drinks, and even air. Applying bonding over your enamel or using it to fill in the space around exposed roots allows it to act as a shield, eliminating sensitivity while protecting the tooth from decay and further erosion. It’s a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to improve how your teeth feel on a daily basis!

4. Misshapen Teeth

Dental bonding can easily change the appearance of teeth that are irregularly shaped or too small compared to nearby teeth. When you choose dental bonding to change the shape of a tooth, your dentist will work with you to determine what you want the tooth to look like. They will then apply the resin to your tooth, mold it into the desired shape, and cure it. Once the resin has hardened, they’ll shape the tooth a little more if necessary and finish the process by buffing it so that it matches the natural gloss of your other teeth. Despite the artistry and skill that goes into molding the resin, the process only takes an average of 30 minutes for each tooth.

5. Stained Teeth

If you have permanent stains on your teeth that professional whitening treatments can’t resolve, dental bonding can give you the bright, evenly white smile you’ve always wanted. Dental bonding is incredibly versatile, so you can use it to cover a single stained tooth or apply it to all of your teeth to resolve stains that span multiple teeth. Since you can choose the shade of resin that your dentist uses, you can match it to the color of your other teeth or use it to whiten your entire smile. If you’d like to, you can even change the shape of your teeth while you’re at it!

The resin that makes up dental bonding does stain relatively easily, however, so you may be better off choosing veneers to restore the appearance of permanently stained teeth if you consume a lot of dark-colored foods or drinks. Otherwise, however, dental bonding provides an inexpensive solution to stained teeth without sacrificing the flexibility that veneers offer.

Dental bonding is quick, easy, and budget-friendly, as well as versatile enough to resolve a surprisingly wide range of dental issues. In many cases, this makes it a great treatment option that’s worth looking into! If you’d like to learn more about dental bonding and how it may be able to help you, feel free to call and schedule a consultation with our team at First Dental Associates at any time.