Trial Smile: Try It First

Why Preview a Smile at All?

Picturing a new smile from someone else's before-and-after photos is difficult, and a design on a monitor only goes so far. Once the same teeth are in your mouth they look different: your lips move across them, you see them in the context of your own face, and you hear your own voice. A trial smile turns the design from something you hope will work into something you can test.

It matters most for porcelain veneers, because the enamel preparation they need is permanent. No tooth is prepared until you have worn the design and said yes to it. Larger bonding cases and smile makeovers benefit in the same way, settling decisions about length, outline and proportion before any composite goes on, so the treatment visit is spent building the smile rather than debating it.

How It Is Made and Fitted

The process starts at your smile design appointment with photographs, a short video and an iTero Element 3D scan, about 45 minutes in all. We then build the digital design on images of your face so the proportions follow your features. Allow about ninety minutes for the whole consultation.

From the design we produce a mould. It is filled with a tooth-coloured material and pressed over your teeth for a little while; because nothing is drilled or glued, the mock-up simply comes away at the end of the visit and your teeth are left exactly as they were. In between, you can study it, talk with it, photograph it and ask for changes. The whole idea is that alterations cost almost nothing now and a great deal later.

What to Look at While It Is In

• Length and outline. Do the edges look overlong or stubby, boxy or overly rounded, and is each side a mirror of the other?
• Your lips. How much tooth shows when your face is relaxed and when you smile broadly, and does the edge of the upper teeth follow the curve of your lower lip?
• Speech. Read a few sentences aloud. Lengthened front teeth can alter certain sounds at first, and now is the time to notice.
• Photographs. Front, profile, close up and from a few metres away, ideally in daylight by a window.
• Whether it feels like you. A brighter, more even look or a softer, more natural one is down to taste, and the trial smile lets you choose with your eyes open rather than on trust.

After the Trial Smile

If anything needs to change, we revise the design, whether that means lengthening, shortening, squaring off, softening, or showing more or less tooth. Every one of those is an edit to a digital file rather than to a tooth. Where the revisions are substantial, we can make a second mock-up so you can see the revised version.

When you are happy, the approved design becomes the plan for everything that follows. With porcelain veneers it tells Dr Pei how much each tooth needs preparing, which is how preparation is kept minimal, and the laboratory makes the porcelain to match it. With composite bonding, Dr Pei sculpts each tooth by hand to the same design. Because the design carries through every stage, what you approved is what you receive, bearing in mind that a temporary resin never looks quite like finished porcelain or composite.

Treatments That Use a Trial Smile

Every porcelain veneer case has one, scheduled before any enamel is touched. Bigger composite cases, whether bonding or composite veneers, use one too. In a full smile makeover that brings together Invisalign, whitening, bonding, veneers or implants, the mock-up shows the destination before the journey starts, so every later step is working towards a result you have already seen.

Some treatment does not need it. Whitening alters colour and nothing else, so there is no shape to preview, and one chipped corner is usually built up freehand in composite at the bonding visit. Invisalign has its own equivalent: a 3D simulation on screen of how the teeth are expected to move. We will say at your consultation whether your plan includes a trial smile, and the smile makeover page sets out how the design, the mock-up and the order of treatment connect.

What It Costs

Nothing extra. At Peninsula Dentists the smile design and trial smile sit within the fee for your treatment. Our fee list shows them from £250 and from £250 respectively, and both are absorbed into the treatment fee once you go ahead. The consultation is free; the £40 deposit is refunded after you attend, at our practice on Greenwich Peninsula, ten minutes' walk from North Greenwich station.

You come away with a written plan showing the order of treatment, which teeth would change and a fixed fee, and you can see the trial smile before signing up to anything. For reference, porcelain veneers are from £650 a tooth and composite bonding from £375 a tooth;² typical totals are in our veneers cost guide.

The Limits of a Trial Smile

As a preview of shape, length and proportion, a trial smile is very reliable, but it is not the finished work. The temporary resin is more opaque than porcelain, which will look more translucent and lifelike in the end. Colour is decided separately, based on your teeth after any whitening, your complexion and the teeth beside the veneers. And since the mock-up is laid over teeth that have not been prepared, it may feel slightly bulkier than the veneers themselves.

Nor can it forecast how Invisalign will move your teeth, or how the gum line will look after contouring. That is why those treatments happen earlier in a plan, with the final shape checked again once they are done. Treated as what it is, a check on the design, it is still the surest way to know the outcome before a single tooth is changed.

Questions

This guide explains the options in general terms. Only an examination can tell you which of them suits your own teeth.