Smile Design

A healthy and beautiful smile gives you an advantage in many areas of life. It enhances both your appearance and your success in communication. One of the most common issues is that individuals are not satisfied with their smile, trying to cover their mouth when they laugh, and feeling uncomfortable with the shape and color of their teeth.

In smile design, dentistry and art are applied together to provide a beautiful smile. In this treatment, your dentist creates a treatment plan by considering your personal preferences along with health and naturalness.

What does smile design mean?

It is the evaluation and application of the lips, gums, and teeth in harmony to achieve an aesthetic smile. Here, the structure of the lips, the gum level, the color and alignment of the teeth, the size of the teeth, the nose, and the cheeks are evaluated as a whole. When you smile, the harmony among the lips, teeth, and smile expression is important for the aesthetic smile analysis.

Which treatments does smile design include?

1. Teeth whitening
2. Pink aesthetics
3. Zirconium or porcelain crowns
4. Bonding
5. Orthodontic treatments
6. Porcelain laminates
7. Shaping the lip contours
8. Implant

Which problems can smile design eliminate?

1. Problems with tooth color
2. Irregularities in the gums
3. Misalignment of teeth
4. Irregular gaps between the teeth
5. Missing teeth
6. Facial shape deformities
7. Incompatibility in tooth lengths
8. Broken and cracked tooth structures

What is the difference between women and men in smile design?

There are differences in smile design applications for women and men. In women, the teeth should be in harmony with the oval shape of the face. Women tend to have rounder, more oval-shaped teeth, while men have more square or rectangular forms.

For women:
The smile line is curved upwards. The corners of the teeth are more softly rounded. There are small gaps between the corners of neighboring teeth. The two central teeth are slightly longer than the adjacent teeth.

For men:

The smile line is flatter. The corners of the teeth are more pronounced. Neighboring teeth meet on a straighter line.

Face Shape:

There are similarities between face shape and tooth forms. Generally, people with long faces have longer tooth forms; those with square or round faces have square or round tooth forms.

In classic dentistry, restorations were done by trying to maintain these similarities. However, if you want to change something in your appearance, reversing these similarities can create different expressions by using illusions.

For example, if a person with a long face is given rectangular, long teeth, the face will look even longer. However, by trying oval or wider forms, a different expression can be achieved. Likewise, giving a person with a round face thinner and longer teeth can make the face appear slimmer.

Age
With aging, teeth tend to darken and become shorter in length.

As tissues sag, the upper lip also sags downward due to gravity. Since the vertical dimension is shortened, the chin and the tip of the nose get closer than they should be. While speaking and laughing, the upper teeth become less visible, and the lower teeth become more visible, resulting in an older appearance.

Esthetic dentistry can help you achieve the smile you desire through methods such as increasing the vertical dimension, teeth whitening, cosmetic contouring, bonding, laminate veneers, or implants.

How can you prevent an aged appearance?

You should pay attention to dental tartar cleaning. Gum recession and gaps caused by tartar make you look older.

Unsightly old fillings can be replaced.

Teeth that have darkened in color can be whitened. Dark-colored teeth make a person look older.

Missing teeth can be compensated for with implants or prosthetics. Tooth loss can cause your oral structure to shrink.

Poor occlusion (bite) should be corrected. Orthodontic treatment can be applied for this. Pronunciation problems when speaking may be due to poor occlusion.

Lips
Lips also shape our teeth and our smile. In smile design, adjustments are made according to whether lips are thick, thin, long, or short, to cover existing imperfections.

Gums
Even if our teeth are beautiful, unhealthy gums can make our smile look bad. Healthy but misshapen gums can also create an unwanted appearance in our smile.

In esthetic dentistry, gum health can be examined under two main application areas:

1. Treatment of unhealthy gums

2. Correction of esthetic concerns

Gum Manicure (Gingivoplasty)

‘Gummy smile’ is the condition where the gums appear too much when smiling. It is possible to adjust the gum line.

Gum Graft

This is the process of adding tissue to areas where there is excessive gum recession to level out the tooth length that appears elongated.

Gum-Effect Porcelains

In areas where there is total gum recession and surgical correction is difficult or impossible, porcelain applications that imitate the color of the gum can be made.

Teeth

In today’s modern dentistry concept, there are many alternative treatments for dental esthetics. The important thing is to accurately identify the problems and choose treatments that can provide maximum esthetics with minimal intervention.

Color

To address esthetic concerns about tooth color, a whitening method under the supervision of a dentist can be selected.

Crowding

First, the option of orthodontic treatment should be considered. It is possible to undergo orthodontic treatment without an age limit.

Shape of the Teeth

For irregularities and form disorders, composite or porcelain laminate veneers can be applied as conservative treatment options.

Irregular Tooth Edges

Due to various jaw movements and the effect of time, the cutting edges of our teeth may wear down, creating uneven and serrated forms. This can be corrected with a cosmetic contouring procedure. During this procedure, the deformed surfaces are smoothed without damaging the teeth.

Dark-Colored Fillings

Dark-colored fillings can be replaced with tooth-colored fillings.

Shadows on the Teeth

There is not a single uniform color in teeth. Natural teeth are never purely white. The color and translucency of the teeth vary by region.

We can examine the body of a tooth in three regions:

1. Cervical (Neck) Region: Even in the brightest and whitest smiles, this area tends to be yellowish.

2. Middle Region: Less yellowish than the cervical area.
3. Incisal (Cutting) Edge: It has varying degrees of translucency and a slightly grayish appearance.

What are the stages of smile design?

First, oral hygiene and gum health are evaluated. If there are any cavities or old fillings, a treatment plan is made to clean the cavities and renew the old fillings with aesthetic tooth-colored fillings.

The esthetic planning begins with the dentist determining which geometric shape the facial features most closely match. The lines in the individual’s face determine what form the teeth should take.

Intraoral and extraoral photographs are taken. A panoramic jaw X-ray is obtained. The photos are projected onto a computer screen, and based on the patient’s dental X-ray and specific requests, the desired smile line is determined.

The appearance of the gums when smiling is evaluated. It is determined what needs to be done to ensure gum symmetry.

The orientation and relationship of the teeth with each other, as well as the gaps between them, are evaluated.

The tooth-gum relationship is checked: whether the zenith points—the last points where teeth enter the gums—are in the correct position.

The contact relationships between the teeth, the visible dimensions of the teeth, and the ratio of length to width, as well as the forms, character, and surface texture of the teeth, are examined.

The relationship between the incisal edges and the lips, as well as the relationship among the incisal edges themselves, is evaluated.

Before beginning any trimming process on your teeth, a temporary modeling is done with tooth-colored materials. Thanks to this temporary modeling, an image similar to the final result is obtained without touching your teeth.