Veneers or clear aligners: which suits your smile?

Do veneers and aligners correct the same thing?

No. Clear aligners move teeth: they correct position, crowding, a gap, a tooth that sticks out or sits back. They change neither a tooth’s shape nor its colour.

Veneers are thin pieces of ceramic bonded to the visible face of the teeth. They change a tooth’s shape, length and shade, and can hide small irregularities. They do not move teeth.

So the first question is: what bothers you? Crooked or gappy teeth, damaged, worn or heavily stained teeth, or a bit of all of these.

What is removed from the tooth with veneers, and with aligners?

To bond a veneer, the tooth is usually prepared by removing a thin layer of enamel. Measured in a laboratory on resin teeth, that loss is about 3% to 30% of the part of the tooth above the gum, depending on the type of preparation, against 63% to 72% for a full crown. These figures give an order of magnitude, not a measurement of your own tooth. That is little next to a crown, but it is irreversible: a prepared tooth will always need covering.

Aligners, as a rule, remove nothing. When a little space is needed, the plan may include enamel reduction between some teeth: up to 0.5 mm from the sides, a routine procedure that needs care and experience.

Can veneers straighten crooked teeth?

They can give the illusion of alignment when the problem is slight. But the further out of line a tooth is, the more enamel has to come off for the veneer to look straight, sometimes a lot on a tooth that sticks out. For healthy but misplaced teeth, aligning them first often means less preparation, or no veneers at all.

The other way round, aligners will not restore the shape of a broken, worn or very small tooth, or brighten a dark one: that is where veneers have their place.

When should aligners and veneers be combined?

When both problems exist together: teeth that are both misplaced and damaged, or a gap to share out before reshaping the teeth. The order is then:

1. align the teeth with the trays;
2. hold the result with a retainer;
3. prepare and bond the veneers on teeth that are now in place, which often need less preparation.

Each treatment is described in detail on the ceramic veneers and clear aligners pages.

How long do ceramic veneers last?

In published studies, the survival of ceramic veneers is estimated at 89% over a median of 9 years, and at 94% for glass-ceramic, the family of ceramics that lithium disilicate belongs to. More recent data on lithium disilicate alone show about 97% of veneers still in place after around ten years. The most frequent complication is fracture or chipping; debonding is rarer.

So a veneer may need repairing or replacing one day. The result of aligning teeth does not break, but it needs a retainer to last (see the guide to retainers).

What about whitening, composite bonding or a smile makeover?

Depending on what bothers you, there are other options, sometimes simpler ones:

• whitening, when colour is the only problem and the teeth are healthy: it lightens the natural enamel without removing any tooth;
• composite bonding, for a small chip or a small gap: it is shaped directly on the tooth, with little or no preparation, but it stains and wears faster than ceramic;
• a smile makeover, often called a ‘Hollywood smile’: a plan that combines several treatments across many teeth (alignment, whitening, veneers, crowns).

A full makeover is a major project, to be decided on a detailed plan rather than a reference photo. Either way, the logical order stays the same: decay and gums treated first, then position, then colour, and shape last. The practice’s other treatments are listed on the home page.

How do you know what suits your smile?

The examination decides, with photos and, for aligners, a simulation of the planned movement. Be wary of promises of a ‘perfect’ smile: a good plan starts from your teeth, not from a model.