Smile Color and How It Changes

One of the most fundamental elements in smile design is making sure that your smile is as sparkling and white as it can be — but that's not always as obvious as simply bleaching your teeth. That's because there's a lot more to a tooth's color than just its color. When we take our first digital photograph of your smile for our Smile Design process, we take a look at several aspects of your smile's color composition:

• The overall color of the teeth.
• The gradient (how the color changes) as the teeth progress toward the gums.
• The relative brightness of each tooth.
• The opaqueness/translucency of your teeth and how it changes.
• The absence or presence of white vertical lines in your teeth.

The reason we measure all of these attributes is that when we do a smile design, we have to make sure that, in addition to every individual tooth coming out beautiful, the entire smile matches beautifully as well — and that's actually somewhat difficult.

That's because teeth aren't ever one color. Most teeth have more yellow tint toward the top because the underlying dentin is showing through the translucent enamel (nothing to do with plaque or tartar, it's all inside the tooth.) Similarly, most incisors and canines have an almost entirely translucent area at the very tip of the tooth where it's entirely enamel. Matching those subtle color changes can be quite a challenge.

Color-matching issues are one of the major reasons why cosmetic dentists often suggest that people who want a truly stunning smile get porcelain veneers — they're easy, they're all the same color, and that color happens to be the stunning white that everyone wants to have peeking out from between their lips.