“A smile is a window to a person’s heart!”
A smile, which is a universal expression of positive emotions such as happiness, satisfaction, contentment, relaxation, and self-confidence, also plays an important role in people’s interactions in their professional and social lives. So much so that a beautiful smile can shatter stereotypes and help people open many doors in every field.
The value placed on a beautiful smile is not new… There was a search for beauty in this sense even in the oldest civilizations. For example, in the third and fourth centuries B.C., both the Phoenicians and the Etruscans carved animal teeth to mimic the shape, form, and tone of natural teeth. It wasn’t until the 18th century that different branches of dentistry were recognized as distinct. With his colleagues, the Frenchman Pierre Fauchard (1678–1761) modernized dentistry and advocated for aesthetic practices in the field.
What exactly is Smile Design?
In the last decade, the term “smile design” has grown in popularity and usage in the field of dental aesthetics. So, what exactly does smile design imply?
In common parlance, “smile design” refers to dental treatment for cosmetic purposes. However, smile design is the process that occurs prior to the start of treatment:
Smile design is the planning and visualisation of an aesthetic dental treatment appropriate for the patient’s individual needs in order to eliminate incompatibility in the mouth and achieve an aesthetic appearance, taking into account factors such as the compatibility of the face, smile, teeth, and gums with each other, functionality, and applicability.
Smile Design Objectives
The primary goal of dental aesthetics is to create a smooth and stable muscle system in which teeth, tissues, muscles, bone structure, and joints all work in unison (Peter Dawson). Smile design should not be separated from the patient’s overall treatment when planning treatment for aesthetic cases. The relationship between all structures in the mouth, such as muscles, bones, joints, gingival tissues, and occlusion, must be properly planned in order to achieve successful, healthy, and functional results.
Dentistry components such as teeth and gums play an important role in a person’s smile. In today’s society, people have much less self-confidence when they smile if their dental elements are not healthy or do not look right. As dental aesthetics has grown in popularity in recent years, the term “smile design” has become a common term for many clinical treatment plans. In a nutshell, smile design is the process of improving one’s smile by modifying dental-related elements using dental aesthetic applications. Smile design is a comprehensive dental treatment that combines art and science to improve the aesthetic appearance of the smile as opposed to its health and function.
Aesthetic Smile Components
To achieve an aesthetic smile, the facial structure and tooth structure must be perfectly integrated. The hard and soft parts of the face are both included in the facial structure. tooth structure, on the other hand, is closely related to the teeth and their interaction with the gingival tissue. Both the face and the tooth structure should be evaluated and analysed when designing a smile.
Correct smile design begins with facial analysis; if the horizontal line passing through the junction corners of your pupils and your upper tooth (laugh line) is parallel, the laugh lines should also be parallel with the upper fold of the lower lip. The colour, size, and arrangement of your teeth are then examined to ensure that they are in the proper position and proportional to your face. In this context, smile aesthetics must be viewed as a subset of facial aesthetics. Naturally, we can consider it to be the harmony of various parts of the face with one another.
It is important to remember that the most important factor here is the positioning of the mouth and jaw structure in relation to the face and its harmony. Even removing problems with teeth and gums and creating beautiful teeth may not always be enough to create a beautiful smile. For example, if the lip line is too high and the entire upper jawbone appears excessive, even the most beautiful dental aesthetics (porcelain laminated restorations) and gingival aesthetics will not suffice. That patient will need to have a lip operation to restore the lip line that is in harmony with their teeth and to correct their smile.
Designing a Digital Smile with a Computer
The term “smile design” refers to an entire concept. In fact, it is not a treatment in and of itself. It is a technique in which we find aesthetically and functional solutions for our patients by combining more than one dental discipline. Digital smile design, on the other hand, is founded on the development of a treatment protocol, much like how an architect first sketches and projects the project he will begin. The term “digital smile design” does not imply that a treatment will be performed digitally; rather, it refers to the process of planning. Based on this information, we can then use it in conjunction with three-dimensional printers and digital mouth scans to provide a dental aesthetic treatment.
If dental aesthetics is going to be involved in every patient, I believe it is especially important to make preparations by making a two-dimensional plan because it is well known that planning is very important in a job where a personal criterion such as irreversible and subjective “liking” comes into play.
There are numerous tools available to show a person interested in dental aesthetics the various options and the designed smile, but computer-assisted digital smile design is the most effective.
The dentist can perform computer-aided digital smile design using a special graphic design program or a special smile design program. The type of smile can be chosen along with the details, which can be edited/changed depending on the effect of the teeth on the face. In some cases, the patient’s instructions, taste, and style must also be considered in order to achieve a truly harmonious smile.
Applications for Dental Aesthetics that Aid in Smile Design
Tooth whitening, composite filling (bonding), and porcelain veneers (leaf porcelains, porcelain laminates), or porcelain crowns that improve the appearance of the color of your teeth, and gum shaping treatments to adapt to the tooth are some of the most common dental aesthetic applications. Correcting the teeth, such as orthodontics, is a part of aesthetic smile design in adults, not only to correct the smile, but also to prepare a healthier foundation for other cosmetic applications or simply to facilitate cleaning and care of the teeth.
Aesthetic dentistry benefits from laser applications. Laser smile design not only makes applications like teeth whitening and gingival shaping faster and less painful, but it also prevents tissue damage around the treated area because the laser beams are focused on the target. Surgical procedures are not required for applications.