Cosmetic Dentistry Portland
Helping Your Smile Reach New Heights
Belmont Family Dentistry provides exceptional cosmetic dental services to our patients to help them keep their teeth looking and feeling their best. Cosmetic dentistry focuses on improving the appearance of a patient’s mouth, teeth, and smile.
Dr. Tinkle, Dr. Yoon, and Dr. Callan offer a wide range of cosmetic dental care services that can whiten, brighten, and straighten your teeth while replacing or restoring damaged teeth–all to improve your appearance, your smile, and even your self-esteem.
At Belmont Family Dentistry, we use state-of-the-art technology to provide high-quality cosmetic dentistry in a friendly and comfortable atmosphere. If you are looking for the best cosmetic dentistry Portland has to offer, give our office a call today!
Why Choose Belmont Family Dentistry for Cosmetic Dentistry?
- Customized, High-Quality Restorations
- Flexible Financing Available Through CareCredit
- State-of-the-Art, Solar Powered Office
Veneers
A veneer is a tooth-colored shell that covers the front side of your tooth. You might be interested in veneers if you have chipped, stained, crooked or decayed teeth. During your visit, Dr. Tinkle, Dr. Yoon, or Dr. Callan will make a model of your teeth and then craft veneers that fit your teeth perfectly. A small amount of enamel has to be removed from your tooth before a veneer can be added. Once a veneer is on, you will get years of enjoyment with your new smile.
Metal-Free Porcelain Dental Crowns
Porcelain crowns are restorations, but they can be used for aesthetic enhancement too. If you have a tooth that’s bothering you because it looks abnormal, a porcelain crown can reshape it. And if you’re unhappy with the color of your teeth, porcelain crowns will effectively hide the discoloration and give you a beautiful white smile.
Crowns are also a great solution for attaching bridges and restoring fractured teeth to their original shapes and sizes. You’ll most likely need a crown if a tooth breaks down and a filling won’t be enough to fix it. If your tooth cracks, a crown will seal the crevices and hold the tooth together so the damage doesn’t worsen. If you have a tooth that’s not strong enough to support a large filling, a crown can correct that too.
Teeth Whitening
Teeth whitening is a very popular cosmetic dental procedure that is relatively inexpensive and incredibly safe. With teeth whitening, you can choose either to whiten just your upper teeth or both the top and bottom rows. Just one whitening treatment can make such a difference in your smile and appearance.
Teeth whitening is especially effective for patients who have a yellowish hue; however, brownish hued teeth aren’t as likely to bleach well, and grayish hued teeth are the least likely to bleach well.
Also, keep in mind that if you’ve had either tooth-colored fillings or bonding put on your front teeth, the whitener will not change the color of the fillings or bonding, which means these materials will become more obvious after you have your teeth whitened. If this could happen, you might want to consider getting veneers or dental bonding, which looks more natural.
Learn More About Teeth Whitening
Dental Bonding
Dental bonding is the application of a tooth-colored composite resin (plastic) to repair a decayed, chipped, fractured, discolored tooth, to make teeth appear longer, or to change the shape or color of teeth. After the resin is molded and smoothed into its proper shape, the material is hardened with ultraviolet light. After the material hardens, your dentist further trims and shapes it, and polishes the material until it matches the sheen and color of your other teeth.
Understanding the Cost of Cosmetic Dentistry
While it’s not uncommon for patients to assume that cosmetic dentistry is always prohibitively expensive because it is not usually covered by dental insurance, our team will be happy to help you navigate your policy as well as your payment and financing options so you can find a way to make your aesthetic treatment affordable. Here’s a quick breakdown of how cosmetic dental procedures are usually priced at our Portland office, but please feel free to contact the team at Belmont Family Dentistry if you’d like to know more.
Which Cosmetic Dental Service Is Right for Me?
People who are considering cosmetic dentistry are usually interested in one or more of three goals: straighter, whiter, or more shapely teeth. At Belmont Family Dentistry, we offer aesthetic treatments like:
- Veneers: This treatment is more costly, but it can address multiple dental defects and completely transform a smile. With proper care and hygiene, the results may last for more than a decade.
- Metal-free porcelain dental crowns: These appliances are priced similarly to veneers, but they may receive some insurance coverage if they are used to repair a tooth damaged by injury or decay.
- Teeth whitening: This brief and effective treatment is mid-range in terms of price.
- Dental bonding: This method can be an effective and affordable way to address mild dental cracks, stains, gaps, and chips in a brief timeframe.
Cosmetic Dentistry Can Be an Investment Worth Making
While cosmetic dentistry may seem like a large commitment of effort and finances at first, it can also be seen as an investment in your appearance that may pay dividends over time. Achieving a smile you can be proud to show off can make it easier to leave favorable first impressions when you meet people in social or professional situations, which can lead to all sorts of exciting opportunities. If your cosmetic work allows you to stand out from the competition when being considered for a lucrative new position at work, the treatment may pay for itself.
How to Make Cosmetic Dentistry Affordable
Cosmetic dental care is rarely covered by dental insurance since it is not usually considered medically necessary, but we’ll be happy to go over your policy with you in case it is an exception. We also offer flexible financing options from CareCredit to qualifying patients. These payment plans allow our patients to break their bills into easy monthly installments. We’ll be glad to help you navigate your insurance and financing options during your consultation at our Portland office.
Cosmetic Dentistry FAQs
How Do I Know If I Need Cosmetic Dentistry?
More often than not, you’d benefit from cosmetic dentistry if you lack confidence in your smile. The field’s treatments would give you a gorgeous grin to be proud of!
Say you have stained or discolored teeth, for instance. Such flaws aren’t addressed well by over-the-counter whitening products. Thankfully, professional whitening could remove your smile stains and make your pearly whites live up to their nickname.
On the other hand, maybe you suffer from chipped or cracked teeth. A cosmetic dentist can help hide these parts of your smile from view. All they’d need to do is apply some veneers or crowns, though they’ll have to prepare your grin for their placement.
Is Cosmetic Dentistry Safe?
Cosmetic dentistry is perfectly safe when done by a trained cosmetic dentist. As long as the latter handles treatment, no harm will come to your body.
The main thing is that the dentist will assess your smile before doing anything. By doing so, they can give you honest feedback on which procedures might not work well for you. (An example would be them advising against veneers because they’d make a decayed tooth harder to fix.) The exam also helps the dentist tailor their work to your grin, ensuring it doesn’t use unsafe amounts of materials or ingredients.
How Long Does Cosmetic Dentistry Last?
The lifespan of cosmetic dental results varies from one patient to the next. Ultimately, how long your transformed smile lasts will depend on which treatment(s) you get.
Quick and easy treatments – teeth whitening, dental bonding, etc. – often wear off relatively quickly. After all, they typically just apply bleaching gel, tooth-colored resin, or similar substances. These materials wear away after a few years or so, requiring patients to get regular “re-treatments.”
In contrast, invasive services like porcelain veneers and dental crowns persist for a long time. They use durable materials – porcelain, especially – that can endure for at least a decade in many cases. Invisalign can also have effects that last a lifetime if you wear a retainer afterward.
How Do I Choose a Cosmetic Dentist?
Cosmetic dentistry isn’t recognized as a specialty by the ADA, so any dentist may claim to be a cosmetic one. That said, you can look for certain signs to see if a dentist does good aesthetic work.
One such sign is whether the dentist belongs to relevant professional groups. After all, those belonging to organizations like the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (AACD) will clearly know their stuff. You can trust them to be committed to (and up to date on) the latest aesthetic dental methods.
Another point to watch for is a dentist’s reviews, especially those for cosmetic services. If a treatment provider is widely praised for their teeth whitening, veneers, and other aesthetic efforts, they’ll likely do an amazing job for you. Meanwhile, those with negative reviews will probably leave you wanting.