Enhancing your smile can change your life. Your smile is one of your most valuable assets. Having a great smile gives you the confidence to go out and be the best you can be in life.
While traditional dentistry looks at restoring individual teeth on an individual basis in relation to the neighbouring teeth, cosmetic dentistry takes an overall look at all the components of your smile, including the lips, jaws and gums and looks at the overall colour and shape of every tooth in your smile.
Symmetry
Symmetry is the key to smile design, and we look at the symmetry of the teeth, gums, and lips in relation to your whole face.
Horizontal Alignment
A smile line parallel to the imaginary horizontal of the line between the eyes, is often thought to be most attractive, and even as most faces are asymmetrical, this illusion of horizontal alignment can be created.
Gum Curvature
The most attractive smiles possess a symmetrical gum line which follows the curvature of the upper lip, and the gum of each tooth will be gently arced too.
The Golden Proportion Rule
Beautiful teeth are in perfect proportion to each other. As you look at a perfect smile from the front, the teeth will look proportionally smaller as each tooth is viewed further back in the mouth from the midline. This proportion is 1 : 0.65. The lateral or second incisor next to the central incisor, should be 65% of the width of the central incisor.
Colour
The colour of each tooth should be even and should match every tooth in the smile. At the beginning of designing your new smile, we carefully plan with you which shade of white you would like your new smile to be. There are many shades of white, and each person has their own idea of the shade that they would like to be. Natural enamel can be whitened with professional teeth whitening, and dental restorations can be made in every shade of white to match the adjacent teeth, however once dental restorations are made, their colour is fixed.
Tooth Character
Smile design has the flexibility to design ‘delicate’ smiles with small rounded tooth profiles, through to ‘confident’ smiles with broad, rectangular shapes. Older teeth tend to be worn on the tips and flatter on the tooth body, making them look squarer and flatter. Younger teeth are rounder at the tip and body. When we are redesigning the whole smile, we can choose together the new look that you would like or we can choose to copy your original teeth shape.
Smile Line
The smile line connects the tips of your top teeth. The most attractive smiles possess tooth tips which gently follow the curve of the lower lip. A flat smile line suggests aged worn teeth, while a curved smile line makes you and your smile look younger.
Smile Width
The teeth towards the back of the mouth can always be seen in an attractive smile. In a narrow smile the back teeth are often in shadow (this is called negative space), thus creating the appearance of shadows at the corners of the mouth and front teeth that appear to stand out.
Lip Proportion
The lips are supported by the teeth underneath. If there is asymmetry of the underlying teeth, or if teeth are missing, then the lips can be asymmetrical or “fall in” or be pushed out. Ideally the lips will be in a 1:1.6 Golden Proportion of the upper: lower lip.
