One of the most common points of confusion is knowing the difference between crowns and veneers. Both are very different and require very different approaches.
A dental crown is a protective cover, usually made of porcelain, which sits over the top of your teeth. It is performed generally because a tooth is heavily broken down, restored, root canal treated or otherwise compromised structurally. The before and after cover photo for this blog-post is an example of a dental crown procedure.
A veneer is kind of like a “false fingernail” or “facing” which is bonded to the front of your teeth. It is much more conservative, and is indicated where the tooth is minimally restored, or un-restored and you would like to change the colour, shape and position (to an extent) of your teeth.
Let’s take a look at some more examples
In this example, Dr David Vickers has prepared two teeth for dental crowns (specifically this is a dental bridge). You can see there is quite a lot of tooth structure missing from both teeth.
In this example you can see two front teeth which have been prepared by Dr David Vickers for porcelain dental veneers. Notice that there is a LOT more tooth structure remaining. Only the front surface of the tooth has been lightly adjusted.
Whilst both dental crowns and dental veneers will allow you to alter the shape, position (to an extent) and colour of your teeth, the crown is a MUCH more invasive option to get there.
It is important to discuss your options with your dentist, as there may be much more conservative options to achieve the results you are looking for - such as with Invisalign, composite bonding and/or teeth whitening - which require no structural preparation of the teeth at all. See our Invisalign smile gallery to get some ideas of what can be achieved.