I have four crowns. One of them failed due to age. So I needed to get that re-done. The old crowns were done by a different dentist. The new dentist prefers to do same day crowns. I thought it would be great because I wouldn’t need a temporary and two appointments. I wish I hadn’t though. It looks awful. It’s obviously a fake tooth compared to the rest and one of the ones next to it is a crown as well. It that because it is a same day crown?

Deleth

Dear Deleth,

Same day crowns (sometimes called CEREC crowns) are great restorations. If your crown looks fake, unless it is a very front tooth, it is not because it’s a CEREC crown.

The more likely problem is the dentist. Creating the look of a tooth is an art form. It is very likely your first dentist, who originally did your crowns, has a more artistic eye than your new dentist. There are many different skill levels when it comes to creating beautiful work.

You can ask him to re-do the crown to see if you get better results, however, if the problem is his skill, I doubt you’ll get any better results. My suggestion is you ask for a refund and try a different dentist.

Same Day Crowns On a Front Tooth

Above, I mentioned an exception to the problem being a same day crown. If it was on one of your very front teeth, that could explain it looking fake compared to the rest. CEREC crowns are milled from a single block of porcelain, which would look pretty uniform.

Our teeth aren’t uniform. Instead, they have varied subtleties and parts of it are more translucent than others. If you’ve got a uniform tooth next to a varied one, then it is going to look fake.

Because of this, most dentists prefer to use traditional all-porcelain crowns. They are made from several different blocks of porcelain in order to mimic the differences in your teeth.

The exception to everything I just said is if you go to one of the top 1% of dentists who will use color changes in the porcelain to mimic the variations. But, even they will need several try-ins before getting things exactly so.

This blog is brought to you by Marietta cosmetic dentist Dr. Cristi Cheek.