- 28 Narborough Rd, Leicester LE3 0BQ
Composite Bonding is an amazing non-invasive treatment which is designed to change the size, shape and colour of your smile, using a composite resin added carefully to your teeth.
It’s a particularly useful treatment for restoring chipped and broken teeth, as well as minor imperfections in your smile including small gaps and aesthetic tweaks.
Composite is a great choice of material as it is tooth coloured, and can actually bond to your natural teeth without the need to remove tooth tissue to create space for it.
Your journey will start with a comprehensive dental and aesthetic consultation with our dentists at Leicestershire Dental Studio. This assessment will allow us to examine your teeth and gums in detail, to ensure good oral health and also to allow us to understand the shape, size, colour and position of your teeth. We’ll spend a lot of time speaking with you to understand your goals and concerns with your smile, and we’ll be then able to present you with your available elective options to improve your smile.
If you choose to go ahead with composite bonding, we’ll likely recommend that the first thing you do is see our hygienist to ensure that your teeth are super-clean, and we’ll get you started on a course of cosmetic teeth whitening to get your natural tooth shade as white as possible.
We’ll be spending time to digitally design your smile, depending on the extent that we’re going to, whether we are simply doing a couple of tweaks or whether we are going for more of a smile makeover. In more comprehensive cases we may even want to do a mock-up of your end goal to guide our composite treatment.
On the day of your composite bonding appointment, we’ll ensure the surfaces of your teeth are carefully cleaned and polished, ready to be bonded to, and then we’ll take the time to carefully layer and bond the composite tooth-by-tooth. The composite resin is then shaped carefully, and can be polished to a very high natural finish to replicate your natural enamel. You can then immediately walk out to enjoy your new smile!
We usually like to see you a couple of weeks after the bonding appointment, as it is not uncommon for us to want to make a few tweaks and changes to accommodate your bite.
There is a recent increase in patients looking for composite bonding to make tweaks to their teeth. This is because composite is a safe and highly aesthetic dental material that can be bonded to your teeth, without any reduction or preparation of the underlying tooth surface.
Composite treatments can also give you amazing changes in the most minimal of time, and the actual composite bonding treatment is usually a single visit – it’s literally a new “smile in a day!”
This Dental Practice is by far the best one I have been to in years! I’ve always been a little scared of visiting the dentist but these guys always make me feel at ease.
There was two lovely gentlemen (One of them was Ali) on reception today when I attended and they were really nice and helpful.
Would 100% recommend this Dental Practice.
Always a positive experience. Staff and the environment excellent.
High quality dentistry. Impressed with the new Professional Team at the practice.
Your dentist will listen to any of your concerns and will assess you clinically first. As long as you have good oral health, then it is likely you will be suitable for composite bonding as long as your goals are realistic and achievable. Your dentist will also check how your teeth bite together, any signs of tooth wear, and whether there is any evidence of grinding/clenching, as this may affect your suitability for composite bonding, or more likely may affect which teeth you can predictably treat with composite bonding.
Once your teeth are healthy, and you have completed any ‘pre-restorative’ orthodontic treatment to straighten/align your teeth (e.g. Invisalign), then we will usually advise that we professional whiten your teeth to achieve the best possible shade prior to bonding. Remember that the composite resin will be colour-matched to be as close to your tooth shade as possible, but once placed the resin can not be whitened – therefore it is important that any and all whitening is done prior to bonding, and completed at least 10 days before the bonding appointment. On the day of the appointment, your dentist will ensure the teeth to be bonded are clean and free of plaque and debris. They may give you some local anaesthesia to ensure you are very comfortable, so you may experience a numb lip/teeth for a couple of hours. They may also need to slightly reshape the teeth, for example if you have sharp chipped edges, it is better to smooth these for better bonding. They will then carefully apply and bond the composite resin to your teeth. In some cases the composite bonding will take just one appointment, but in most cases we recommend a review appointment 1-2 weeks later to finish the shaping and polishing of the composites for the best result.
It is imperative that you really look after your composite bonding to prolong it’s lifespan. You must be brushing (with an electric toothbrush) twice a day, using either floss (or tepe brushes) at least daily, a good fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash (at separate times), and you must maintain regular appointments with both your dentist and hygienist. You must also wear your plastic retainer if prescribed by your dentist, which is usually recommended if you have finished orthodontic treatment and/or if there is evidence that you grind/clench your teeth. If you do not look after your bonding, it will chip/stain/discolour/break/fail a lot quicker than if you do look after it.
It is really important to understand that composite is not as strong as enamel. It can: CHIP, BREAK, STAIN, DISCOLOUR, WEAR DOWN. How quickly it can do these things depends on many factors outside our control, for example, if you grind/clench your teeth, or how well you brush and floss your teeth daily, or if you regularly eat hard, sticky, and coloured foods, and also if you forget to attend your recall appointments with the dentist or hygienist. If you follow the instructions and really look after your composites well, then it can last for years without any issue. Remember that composite resin bonding is a minimally invasive treatment designed to make improvements and adjustments to your teeth, and therefore will need to be looked after regularly.
Composite resin is a fantastic material which is extremely versatile and excellent for use in cosmetic improvements to your smile. It is great for patients who want to improve the size, shape and colour of their teeth, for example if you have chipped edges they can be restored, if you have small gaps between teeth these can be improved, and if you have imperfections in the shape of your teeth these can be adjusted. Composite bonding is a minimally invasive treatment, and is added to your teeth, generally without the need to prepare the underlying tooth structure. Composite can be blended nicely into your natural tooth structure, and we have a selection of shades/tints which we can use to make the match as accurate as possible. Composite is a great material which can be easily adjusted and re-polished, so if you do want to reshape them this is possible, if there are minor chips which appear these can be fixed, and if they do stain a little over time this can be polished and buffed out. Please be aware that changes to composite bonding, including fixing chips, changing the shape, and polishing will incur additional fees.
Always remember that cosmetic treatment is elective treatment – you always have the option to decide to not to any treatment. Alternative restorative treatments to composite bonding includes restoring teeth using ceramic veneers – these are thin layers of ceramic which are carefully prepared in a dental laboratory, and bonding to the front and sides of your teeth, to change the shape, size and colour of them. Ceramic veneers have a higher aesthetic outcome, they have a longer lifespan, and they do not stain. They are generally used when we are trying to achieve a more pronounced and bigger improvement to a patients smile, rather than making small tweaks. Patients are often worried about the underlying tooth being drilled for ceramic veneers, but by careful planning it is often possible to avoid heavy preparation of the underlying tooth. If you require more information about ceramic veneers please let your dentist know.
Composite bonding fees really vary on the complexity of your case, and that’s why we’re happy to provide you with a no-obligation bespoke quotation at your complimentary assessment. Composite bonding usually starts at around £350 per tooth treated.