Veneers and Smile Design in Dubai

Porcelain veneers are made outside the mouth and bonded in a second appointment. The material holds its colour and its polish, it resists staining, and it allows the ceramist to build translucency and surface texture that behave like enamel. In exchange it costs more, it requires at least one laboratory stage, and it usually requires a thin layer of enamel to be reduced.

Composite veneers are built up directly on the tooth in a single appointment. They cost less, they can often be done with little or no tooth reduction, and they are straightforward to repair or modify. They also pick up stain over time, they wear faster at the edges, and they need periodic polishing and eventual replacement.

Neither is a better material in the abstract. The choice comes from how much correction is needed, how much enamel there is to work with, your bite, your budget and how you want to handle maintenance.

The design stage is where most of the work happens. It starts with photographs, an intraoral scan taken on a Dentsply Sirona Primescan AC and, where facial proportions matter, a three-dimensional facial photograph taken on the clinic's Planmeca Viso G5 with the Planmeca ProFace module. From those records the shape, length, width and midline of the new teeth are designed against your face rather than against an abstract ideal.

The design is then transferred into your mouth as a temporary trial smile bonded over the unprepared teeth. You can see it, photograph it, speak with it and show it to the people whose opinion you care about. Everything that needs changing — teeth too long, too square, too light, a midline that reads wrong on camera — is changed at this stage, when changing it costs nothing.

Only once the trial is agreed are the teeth prepared, and the preparation is guided by the approved design so that no more tooth is removed than the design requires. Preparation and bonding are carried out under a dental operating microscope: the margin of a veneer sits within a fraction of a millimetre of the gum, and at that scale the difference between a margin the patient can clean and one that collects plaque is not visible to the unaided eye.

ELEMENTAL has its own digital dental laboratory on site. Most clinics in Dubai send their work out, which is why a shade correction or a contact point adjustment usually means a courier, an outside technician who has never seen the patient, and another appointment a week later.

With the laboratory in the building, the technician can see the case directly, the dentist and technician can discuss shade and shape with the patient present, and adjustments do not depend on an external schedule. It also means control at every stage: the scan, the design, the milling and the finishing all happen under one roof and to one standard.

How the laboratory works is described on the page about the digital dental laboratory.

Preparing a tooth for a porcelain veneer removes enamel, and enamel does not grow back. From that point the tooth will always need a covering of some kind. That is a reasonable trade for a tooth that is already chipped, worn, discoloured or heavily restored; it is a much less reasonable trade for a healthy, unrestored tooth whose only problem is that it is a shade darker than its neighbour.

A second point that is often skipped: the more teeth included, the more the result depends on the bite working. Restoring a full arch changes how the teeth meet, and that has to be planned, not discovered afterwards.

The clinic will tell you when the answer is fewer veneers, or whitening, or orthodontics, or nothing at all. Individual results vary, and no cosmetic plan should be agreed on the strength of a photograph of someone else.

Veneers are cleaned like natural teeth, with the same attention to the margin where veneer meets tooth, since that junction is where decay and gum inflammation start. Interdental cleaning is not optional. Routine hygiene appointments continue, and the technician's polish is checked at each review.

Habits matter more than materials. Opening packaging with the front teeth, biting nails or pens, chewing ice and unmanaged night grinding are what break veneers. If you grind, a night guard is part of the treatment rather than an accessory.

Gum health decides how the result looks over time: recession exposes the margin and makes an otherwise good veneer look wrong. Gum stability is assessed through gum treatment and maintenance before and after the work.

A consultation starts from AED 650. Design records, the trial smile and the veneers themselves are quoted separately in writing after the examination, because the number of teeth, the material and whether preparatory treatment is needed change the figure substantially.

The written estimate lists each stage — records and design, trial smile, preparation and temporaries, definitive veneers, night guard where indicated — so you can see what is included before anything starts, and so the quotation can be compared like for like with any other you have been given.

At ELEMENTAL this treatment is carried out by Dr. Artem Shyshko, General Dentist.

Porcelain veneers at ELEMENTAL start from AED 5,500 per tooth. Composite veneers are quoted separately, since the work is done directly on the tooth rather than in the laboratory. The final cost is confirmed in writing after your consultation, before anything is scheduled.